ELIZABETH ARDEN
Elizabeth Arden is a global prestige beauty brand started in 1910 by Ms. Elizabeth Arden, who opened her own beauty spa on Fifth Avenue at the age of 24, became the world's richest woman, CEO of America's largest woman-owned company, and the first woman to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Not bad for a dirt-poor, farm-girl from rural Ontario, Canada. Right?
THE SITUATION
When new CMO Kathy Widmer and CEO Scott Beattie set out to rebrand Elizabeth Arden in 2010, the brand was in a dire situation. Since Ms. Arden's death in 1966 the brand had been sold and resold to numerous corporate owners from Eli Lilly to Faberge to Unilever. Over the years it had lost its prestige status and relevance to women willing to spend more than $1000 a year on skincare and cosmetics. Our task was clear: re-establish the brand's relevance to women between the ages 30 and 45, not just in the United States, but across the globe.
A GLOBAL BRAND INSIGHT
Planning director Tanyia Kandohla and I spent six weeks speaking with beauty and fashion leaders, personal shoppers, retailers, make-up artists and Arden loyalists in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Italy. Our research helped us uncover a powerful, globally-relevant brand narrative: Professional women love the Elizabeth Arden origin story ... the rags-to-riches story of Ms. Arden herself ... more than they love make-up and skincare.
Woman on all three continents felt the beauty category was obsessed with "Saturday-night-help-me-get-laid beauty" (in the words of one unforgettable Milanese consumer), and no brand was making professional, 9-to-5 beauty the focus of their product offering. Women 30 to 45 told us "We're not trying to be 22 year olds on a first date ... we're trying to be modern-day Elizabeth Ardens."
A GLOBAL CAMPAIGN
That insight led to a new brand promise: "For the Modern Day Elizabeth Arden, beautiful is the courage to be the most confident, most authentic, most radiant person in the room." Working together with a small team of senior freelance creatives + a select group from inside Arden's internal creative department, we created a print and online campaign featuring strong, beautiful professional women who embody the concept of a modern day Elizabeth Arden: a woman who is ready to step into the spotlight, be 100% present, hiding nothing, shying away from nothing.
PRODUCT REDESIGN
The Elizabeth Arden product line had, over time, become a random assortment of individual SKU's and partially discontinued sub-brands. Working with Arden's lead product designer Paul McGlaughlin and San Francisco based designer Kevin Roberson, we consolidated all of the skincare products into 4 key sub-brands, then redesigned and repackaged the entire product portfolio to better fit the brand's new focus on professional women.
RETAIL EXPERIENCE
Outside the color red and the red door logo, there was little consistency in Elizabeth Arden counters from store to store, country to country. Even worse, Ms. Arden's signature Red Door Spas had been sold off during the Unilever years and operated as a separate franchisee organization. Working with the company's lead retail designer Karen Gettinger, we redesigned Arden's top 25 counters to incorporate the brand's spa heritage into the retail experience, re-unified the Red Door Spa with the master brand, and re-introduced Ms. Arden into the brand experience by including thank you cards that share her most inspiring quotes with every purchase.
WEBSITE REDESIGN
Working with the company's lead website architect Claudia Osso and digital agency Create The Group, we helped reconcept and design a new, global elizabetharden.com. Along with digital designer Brian Hurewitz, photographers Dorian Caster, Norman Jean Roy, Ondrea Barbe, director Sean Mullens, and editor Val Lesser, we created all the content that populated the website when it launched in 2012.
THE RESULTS
Over the course of three years, the “Modern Day Elizabeth Arden”story helped transform the brand from top to bottom. It led to the creation of new counters, new retail experiences, new packaging, new product lines, a new website, and an entirely re-established relationship between the Arden retail brand and the famous Red Door Spas..
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The success of the brand relaunch led to the successful sale of the brand to Revlon in 2015 ... And according to a recent Forbes article, a resurgent Elizabeth Arden brand was the #1 source of new revenue for Revlon in 2018, with a 116% growth in net sales.
CREDITS: CD/CW: Jeff Huggins AD: Andrea Janetos, Doug Huffmeyer, Brian Hurewitz CLIENT CD: Ron Rolleston DESIGNER: Kevin Roberson PHOTO: Norman Jean Roy  PRODUCER: Josette Latta DESIGNERS: Paul McGlaughlin, Karen Gettinger SITE DESIGN: Create the Group  UX CODING: Mike Boge DIRECTOR: Sean Mullens  PRODUCER: Tanyia Kandohla EDITORIAL: Val Lesser