Learn from our mistakes: Estée Lalonde. Influencer GOAT, Mirror Water brand owner, and someone who has the potential to make me (and others) fangirl

And why Thierry Henry is the pits this week

If you’re at all aware of the beauty industry and you’ve not been living under a rock, then you’ll know Estée Lalonde. The OG beauty blogger and YouTuber, I’ve been following Estée’s career since working at The Communications Store over a decade ago. What Estée doesn’t know is that when we met properly (I say properly, as I’m sure we would have brushed shoulders when I was a beauty PR and her a beauty blogger), I didn’t realise who she was. This was at a midlife-centric, consumer beauty event, where I was there representing Faace and Estée her gorgeous brand, Mirror Water, and we hit it off, joking around at the expense of ourselves and our current non-existent work/life balance. I went back to my stand, explaining I’d “just met this really cool woman, the founder of Mirror Water” and my team replied, “oh yeah that’s Estée Lalonde” (as in THE Estée Lalonde), and I was pleased that I hadn’t immediately made the connection and embarrassed myself by fangirling over her in person. A year on, and we still like to connect, lending a sympathetic ear as we find ourselves in similar scenarios.

Mirror Water is cleaning up, launching in some exceptional retailers worldwide. But like most of us, there’s things that Estée would do differently if she could have her time again. So, for this latest instalment of ‘Learn from our mistakes’, here’s what Estée had to say:

For practical reasons, I would raise more money before I launched the brand. I would build out the business plan, create a really slick plan and raise as much money as I could before actually launching to market. Because it costs a lot to start a brand and it seems to be easier to raise pre-launch, than once you’re up and running.

I agree with Estée that it’s easy to underestimate the costs involved in launching a business. Having proper funds in place can really ensure that you launch with maximum impact and potentially scale faster.

Why this ad is the pits

I was watching House of the Dragon and Thierry Henry popped up in a deodorant ad. According to Thierry, using deodorant is now ‘selfcare’. I love the football icon (of course I do, being an Arsenal fan), we also had the same car once. But it got me thinking about my (and a generally good) approach to marketing and comms. At Known, we always strive to be original or at least creative in everything we do, for every client we work with. My senior team at my old agency, Beauty Seen, taught me a really valuable lesson, and it was to never just do something to an ok standard. Challenge yourself to always make it the best it can be and really question, ‘is this good enough?’ Yes, we want to resonate with the person on the street, but we don’t want to patronise. Basically, don’t call using deodorant ‘selfcare’, if anything, that’s going to put me off buying it.