Brand Summary
ColourPop was founded in 2014 by siblings Laura and John Nelson in Oxnard, California. The company carries eyeliners. Liquid and solid lipsticks, lip pencils, eye shadows, highlighters, and bronzers. According to their website, the company aims to redefine luxury beauty by creating high-quality products at affordable prices. ColourPop Cosmetics’s annual revenue is $59.0 million. There are 3,000 employees in the company, and the revenue-per-employee ratio is $19,667. Its business model focuses on reaching a broad consumer base through online sales and influencer social media engagement. Therefore, makeup artists, influencers, and celebrities are important clients for ColourPop. In addition, ColourPop has partnered with individuals across the beauty industry and created special edition lines and products. The stakeholders from these partnerships can also be considered as ColourPop’s important clients. ColourPop has a strong social media presence. It has 10.1 million followers and 17k posts on its Instagram account and has 2.2 million followers on its Facebook account. It has 1.4 million followers on TikTok with 1.1 billion views and 24 million likes, which is very impressive. ColourPop had 3.3 million site visitors in January 2024. ColourPop can stand out in the realm of beauty brands because it understands the power of visual appeal. ColourPop’s IG account uses vibrant colors and visually pleasing product shots. The high-quality photography and engaging graphic design successfully catches users’ attention.
Brand Persona and Personality
As ColourPop Cosmetics is a direct-to-consumer brand, its persona exudes the characteristics of uniqueness, youthful vibrancy, fascination, creativity, and inclusivity that establish it as a popular and beloved name in the cosmetics business. With its bold, diverse, and various range of makeup items, ColourPop embraces individuality and encourages individuals to express themselves freely and empowerment. With a lively and energetic tone of voice and its core values of inclusivity, ColourPop makes beauty accessible to everyone. We’ll break down the brand persona into several keywords below.
Bold & Expressive: ColourPop celebrates boldness and self-expression through its unique and vibrant makeup products. This boldness is reflected in ColourPop's product offerings, which feature a wide range of vibrant colors and innovative formulations at affordable prices. Moreover, the brand identity embraces makeup enthusiasts who are unafraid of using bold colors and see makeup as a means of self-expression. This is the exact process of “integrative branding”, which “is an interactive process that builds on the brand identity where meanings are developed, enhanced, and played upon by other actors in the net (Brodie et al., 2017).” By catering to customers who seek to express their individuality through makeup, ColourPop has established itself as a go-to brand for those looking to make a statement with their beauty looks.
Trendy & Agility: The brand's agility in responding to rapidly changing beauty trends reflects its commitment to staying relevant and appealing to its target audience. As described by Brodie et al. (2017), ColourPop showcases a "specific dynamic capability" in enriching its brand identity through the contributions of various actors.Its direct-to-consumer model, combined with its agile approach to product development and marketing, enables the brand to quickly respond to industry trends and consumer feedback. The result is a brand image that is perceived as trendy and forward-thinking, constantly evolving alongside its consumers.
Inclusive: ColourPop fosters inclusivity by catering to a diverse range of customers and collaborating with influencers from various backgrounds. Whether it's partnering with Disney for themed makeup collections or collaborating with influencers known for their vintage glamor or dramatic cosplay looks, ColourPop ensures that its products and marketing efforts are inclusive and accessible to people of all ages, interests, and identities.
Easy to Connect With: “The competitive differentiation of a brand facilitates brand personality implementation (Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001).” ColourPop has successfully cultivated a relatable and approachable image, especially compared to its “luxury beauty” brands competitors which are sold in counters and via distributors. ColourPop’s dedicated to fostering a sense of connection and intimacy with its audience. This could be achieved through engaging social media content, interactive marketing campaigns, or personalized customer experiences. By being approachable and endearing, ColourPop fosters loyalty and emotional attachment among its customers, turning them into brand advocates and ambassadors.
All in all, ColorPop’s brand persona is rooted in being approachable and inclusive, which resonates with a wide audience. While being at the forefront of trends, the brand maintains a down-to-earth charm that fosters genuine connections with its customers. This authenticity is further strengthened through partnerships with influencers and other brands, solidifying its reputation as a brand created for and by the community.
Brand/Consumer Relationships
Recognizing the power of social media to serve as a bridge for conversation between ColourPop and consumers, ColourPop uses non-traditional communication methods, particularly through online platforms, to cultivate deeper connections with its consumers. By leveraging social media channels such as Instagram and TikTok, ColourPop creates dynamic relationships with its customers, bypassing geographical barriers and establishing a virtual space where consumers can engage directly with the brand. This cyberspace fosters a sense of immediacy and intimacy that allows ColourPop to build authentic connections with its audience in real time. Through engaging content and interactive features, ColourPop invites its customers into its world and fosters a strong brand-consumer relationship that is rooted in mutual trust, engagement, and authenticity.
However, while these online communication channels offer numerous benefits, they also present certain challenges. Since ColourPop is exclusively available online and in Ulta, the company has concentrated its marketing efforts on social media platforms rather than physical stores. Consequently, the absence of physical retail locations limits ColourPop's capacity to provide in-person services. For example, potential customers are unable to test, sample, or swatch any of the colors and textures of cosmetics before making a purchase but rely on online images. Nonetheless, these images may sometimes deviate from reality, potentially causing discrepancies in product perception. Also, customers are required to cover shipping costs unless their orders exceed thirty dollars, qualifying them for complimentary domestic shipping. More importantly, the absence of physical retail means that makeup demonstrations and product trials are unavailable, and the lack of tactile interaction may present a barrier to consumers who value hands-on experiences when making purchasing decisions. Lastly, miscommunications and misunderstandings may occur during the virtual nature of online platforms, which may damage the positive brand image and shopping experiences.
Competitor Analysis
Peer Competitors
For the purpose of investigating ColourPop's performance in the beauty industry, a competitor analysis was conducted. The first peer competitor identified for ColourPop is Kylie Cosmetics. Both brands were formerly owned by the same parent company, Seed Beauty, and target similar audience groups. Kylie Cosmetics, founded by Kylie Jenner, initially focused on selling Kylie Lip Kits, which are sets of liquid lipstick and lip liner. Subsequently, the brand expanded its product line to include new eyeshadow palettes, highlighters, and blushes, emphasizing the core value of using vegan, clean, and paraben-free ingredients. Unlike ColourPop, Kylie Cosmetics positions itself as a 'luxury beauty' brand. The celebrity influence of Kylie Jenner allows it to set relatively higher prices, offering a range of options. This pricing strategy enables the brand to capture a broader market, from everyday consumers—who are also the target audience for ColourPop—to those seeking luxury beauty items.
The mission statement 'Disrupting the Beauty Industry' reflects Kylie Jenner’s dedication to establishing a brand that shares her unique sense of beauty within the existing industry, emphasizing innovation and creativity. The name and logo, which incorporate Kylie Jenner’s signature and personalized elements, utilizing her widespread recognition and influence as a celebrity (see Appendix 3). The logo, featuring lips, symbolizes the brand's signature product, the Kylie Lip Kits, while also sharing Kylie’s personal story about her insecurities regarding her lips. The brand elements, combined with a strong personal branding strategy, create a direct association with Kylie’s personality, which embodies trendiness, luxury, and exclusivity. Taking the advantages of the strong personal branding strategy, Kylie Cosmetics capitalizes on Kylie’s extroverted personality by sharing personal beauty insights and routines on her social media platforms. When she shares and demonstrates how to use the products in her makeup routine on social media, it feels more like receiving recommendations from a friend rather than watching a marketing pitch for the brand’s target audiences. This approach fosters an emotional connection, contributing to brand loyalty and helping consumers learn how to best use these products.
One of the common and popular branding strategies that both ColourPop and Kylie Cosmetics uses is social media marketing and influencer collaborations. At the early stages of the brand, Kylie cosmetics’s main branding strategy is targeting the fan base of Kylie Jenner as well as the fans of the Kardashian families. The brand mainly focused on the collaboration with brands that are owned by the Kardashian family to generate more brand awareness among their followers. After that, it started to collaborate with other trending brands such as Balmain (Valenti, 2019). The social media marketing strategies help Kylie Cosmetics to raise brand awareness as well as driving sales, while the fans of Kylie Cosmetics and brands for collaborations would both be interested in purchasing the products.
Kylie Cosmetics also forms a brand community for those consumers who not only love the brand, but also appreciate the “Kylie look” and are willing to learn from the beauty and fashion trend that Kylie Jenner sets. In addition, the brand uses scarcity marketing strategies for its products. Each item has limited stock so that it creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity for purchasing the new launch products. Combining these branding strategies together, Kylie Cosmetics has benefited in its brand recognition and sales increase.
The second peer competitor for ColourPop is BH Cosmetics, founded in Los Angeles, California, in 2009. The brand offers similar products, including eyeshadow palettes, blushes, and contours, at prices comparable to those of ColourPop. In response to the growing trend towards sustainability and ethical concerns, BH Cosmetics also emphasizes the value of cruelty-free, vegan, clean, and planet-friendly products. The brand showcases strong personalities that incorporate characteristics associated with California, such as energy, vibrancy, and sunshine. This is reflected in the choice of fonts and colors on its official website. The bold fonts and vibrant colors further imply key values of confidence, authenticity, kindness, power, and engagement. Through the design and color of the text, the brand expresses its encouragement for individuals to express their true selves and stand out.
For the branding strategies that BH Cosmetics employs, social media and influencer partnerships play an important role. The brand has collaborated with a group of approximately 200 influencers, known as BH Baddies, to promote its brand image and newly launched products (Carlson, 2021). Some consumers are inclined to purchase products recommended by influencers because they believe the products will be functional and useful, while others are motivated by the desire to emulate the influencers they admire. BH Cosmetics also uses this psychological effect with its loyalty program, which shares the name BH Baddies. Consumers who purchase products can automatically join the loyalty program, becoming members of BH Baddies. This strategy gives consumers the impression that by admiring the influencer and purchasing BH products, they can become part of this community. Additionally, the brand collaborated with Doja Cat to launch a makeup collection (Abelman, 2021). This collaboration not only helped Doja Cat release her first-ever makeup collection but also utilized her influence to increase brand awareness and drive sales for BH Cosmetics. The most notable product from this collaboration is the 36-shade Mega Shadow Palette, featuring earthy brights. The design of this collaboration palette is consistent with the brand's original product offerings, drawing inspiration from the environment and surroundings. For example, the brand offers eyeshadow palettes named ‘Meet Me in Malibu,’ ‘Iconic in Iceland,’ and ‘Apres in Aspen.’ Even while collaborating with Doja Cat, BH Cosmetics maintains consistency in its product design offerings.
Thus, although BH Cosmetics offers similar products and employs branding strategies comparable to those of ColourPop, it distinguishes itself with a strong brand personality that reflects the colors of the environment and surroundings in its product collections. Additionally, it conveys an image of energy and positivity through the design of its website and products.
Competitor Analysis
Stretch Competitor
After analyzing peer competitors of similar size compared to ColourPop, we identified Urban Decay as one of the stretch competitors. Founded in 1996, Urban Decay offers a wide range of products from eyeshadow palettes to lipsticks. The brand emphasizes the core values of ‘being fearless’ and ‘being cool without being cruel.’ These values are reflected in their distinct product style, characterized by high pigment and long-lasting makeup. Urban Decay champions the rights and opportunities for everyone to express their true self and to be unapologetically themselves at all times through its products.
The brand’s success story showcases highlights of its branding strategies. Firstly, the brand identified and promoted its signature products, the Naked Eyeshadow Palette collections. Building on this collection, it has continued to launch new products to enrich its offerings. The brand’s reputation has been enhanced by this collection; when mentioning the brand, consumers can immediately recall what it is famous for.
Secondly, in line with the trend of evolving marketing strategies, Urban Decay has established a strong social media presence to communicate its brand values and messages to target audiences. Operating across all major social media channels, Urban Decay boasts 192.5K followers on TikTok, 10.7M on Instagram, 270.1K on Pinterest, 155K subscribers on YouTube, 1.2M followers on Twitter, and 4.3M on Facebook, giving the brand a total reach of over 16.8M (Barnett). This robust presence on social media enables Urban Decay to capture the public’s attention more effectively. By utilizing social media, Urban Decay has introduced custom hashtags, encouraged user-generated content, provided calls-to-action, and posted tutorial videos on current societal trends. This strategy not only brings the product story to life by linking Urban Decay’s offerings with new societal trends but also enhances engagement with consumers by enabling direct interaction and gathering valuable consumer insights. These insights are crucial for shaping future products and marketing campaigns. Additionally, the brand stays on top of beauty trends, such as the Y2K style, by posting tutorial videos that demonstrate how to use their products to achieve these looks. These tutorials are highly effective in teaching consumers about product usage. Urban Decay also uses content creators to feature looks using their products and participate in viral marketing conversations, ultimately adding value for its audience.
Beyond collaborations with celebrities and influencers, Urban Decay has developed unique strategies by enabling its in-house employees, such as beauty advisors, to become social media stars. These employees engage consumers through tutorial videos and other content that showcases the brand’s products. It becomes particularly persuasive when these in-house employees genuinely recommend the products. Furthermore, these employees can receive more direct feedback through comments, gaining valuable consumer insights while accurately conveying the brand’s values, which they deeply understand.
In conclusion, Urban Decay employs common branding strategies, such as collaborations with celebrities and influencers, as well as social media marketing, but takes these strategies to a higher level. The brand skillfully uses social media to stay on trend and connect its products with current topics. It targets both external and internal influencers to enhance public awareness and credibility. ColourPop could learn from these strategies, given its heavy reliance on social media marketing and collaborations. It might consider adopting unique strategies within social media platforms and engaging in higher quality collaborations to leave deeper impressions on consumers.
Critical Assessment and Recommendations
Brand Elements Assessment
“Brands facilitate and mediate the marketing processes used to realize the experiences that drive co-creation of value (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995,)”As for brand fundamentals, ColourPop's brand is built on the pillars of affordability, inclusivity, and a direct-to-consumer approach, with an agile response to market trends and consumer feedback. They emphasize a cruelty-free ethos, trendsetting product offerings, and a strong connection with their audience, particularly through social media (Marikar, 2017). Next, we’ll first examine the most essential elements of ColourPop, following by assessing if the brand elements have been well-translated into the brand elements.
Logo Design and Font Usage
ColourPop’s iconic logo is simple but effective, showcasing an authentic and creative nature. The brand’s choice of a playful, handwritten logo style directly complements their brand image of being accessible, creative, and vibrant. Unlike many high-end beauty brands that often lean towards more minimalist and sophisticated logo designs(Peate, 2022), ColourPop's friendly and informal design reflects the brand's approachable and community-focused nature. The hand-drawn, sans-serif font of the logo resonates with the brand's target audience by conveying a sense of fun and approachability, principles that are central to ColourPop’s brand identity. Taking a more authentic and natural approach to their wordmark has allowed ColourPop to stand out in a saturated market.
This distinctiveness is further accentuated by the logo’s flexibility in terms of color and style variations: The logo’s design is inherently flexible, rather than consistently using the same logo for all branding and marketing campaigns, ColourPop regularly change the color scheme and style variations to align with collaborative collections or reflect the thematic undertones of social media campaigns(see Appendix 4). This adaptability not only maintains visual engagement but also underscores ColourPop's adeptness at staying relevant and appealing to the ever-evolving preferences of their target market, illustrating a cohesive and adaptive brand personality. Such versatility extends beyond the logo to include their product range and packaging, further reinforcing the brand's ethos of creativity and inclusiveness.
Color Strategy
ColourPop, true to its name, makes an immediate impression with its vibrant, rich, and dazzling color palette. The brand's use of color is bold and passionate, evident across its website, packaging, and products—most notably the eye-catching array of eye shadow palettes. Reflecting the brand's fundamental ethos of offering an extensive color range in its products, even in collaborations with other brands and in their logo design, ColourPop does not shy away from employing a diverse and audacious color scheme that captivates the eye. Their unique, youthful, and vivacious color combinations are not just visually striking—they embody the brand’s dynamic, spirited, and life-filled essence.
The brand frequently uses a bright and varied color palette in its product offerings and marketing materials, embodying its name, "ColourPop." The use of vibrant colors not only highlights the brand's focus on color but also conveys a youthful and inclusive energy, underscores a keen awareness of their audience's preferences, enhancing the brand's appeal and accessibility.
Product Packaging
The brand employs vibrant colors and visually appealing imagery in the packaging of each of its products. While certain individuals utilize smooth and flowing matte shades and captivating patterns, others incorporate a thrilling and glamorous touch of sparkle and glam (Jelena Relić, 2023). ColourPop's product packaging strategy further embodies the brand's core ideals. The mix of colorful, lively, elegant, and dreamy designs across their product range reflects a conscious effort to cater to a broad spectrum of consumer tastes and occasions—from regal and flirty eyeshadows to simple and straightforward lipsticks.
ColourPop has consistently positioned itself as a brand synonymous with accessibility, inclusivity, and a consumer-centric approach. The evaluation of their packaging must, therefore, weigh against these brand pillars. Historically, the packaging has been a vibrant celebration of the brand’s ethos – bursting with color, whimsical designs, and a friendly tone that invites consumer interaction. This packaging style aligns well with the brand's mission to democratize beauty by offering a playful and approachable aesthetic that contrasts with the often exclusive and intimidating air of luxury cosmetics.
The inclusion of personalized, handwritten notes in the packaging was a strategic masterstroke in embodying the brand's commitment to individual consumer acknowledgment. These notes served as tangible touchpoints of ColourPop's dedication to personalization, fostering a sense of intimacy and connection that is coveted in the digital age of commerce.
However, the phased removal of these personalized notes marks a departure from this strategy. While this decision likely arises from operational scaling and cost considerations, it introduces a dissonance between the brand's foundational goal of personal connection and the new state of their packaging. This shift could be perceived as a move away from the 'indie' spirit towards a more conventional, mass-market approach, which may not resonate as deeply with a consumer base that values the uniqueness and personal touch of indie brands.
Moreover, as the brand grows, it is essential to reconcile the efficiencies of scaling with the preservation of consumer relationships. The evolution of their packaging strategy suggests a prioritization of operational pragmatism over the bespoke consumer engagement that once differentiated the brand in a crowded marketplace.
To sustain its growth without compromising on its core brand promise, ColourPop might benefit from integrating brand fundamentals with the efficiency of mass production. This could involve exploring new forms of personalization that are scalable or leveraging digital platforms to maintain personalized engagement. Ensuring that inclusivity and individual attention continue to permeate through every consumer interaction is critical, especially as the brand expands.