Behind Successful Celebrity-Owned Brands Look for Seasoned Executives
As social media continues to dominate our lives, celebrity-owned brands are attaining greater prominence, and a number of them have grown beyond the association of their famous founders and into multi-billion dollar brands. How do celebrity-owned brands become household names and an indispensable part of consumers’ lives? Typically, it’s through successful growth strategy, partnership, and hiring the sort of talented executives who can help craft a growth strategy that is as iconic and memorable as the famous face behind the brand.
Read on for some celebrity-founded brands that have gone the distance, and the secrets of their executive teams’ success.
Goop and Gwyneth Paltrow Look for Execs who Can Live the Brand
When Gwyneth Paltrow founded her health and wellness brand Goop as a newsletter in 2008, many observers mocked it as overly “woo-woo” and out of touch with regular consumers. More than a decade later, the company has millions of followers and is worth more than $250 million dollars.
Even controversial stances have gained the company notoriety and new followers and thus its not surprising that a multi-pronged approach to growth has powered the company to new heights. In 2020, Goop premiered a reality show on Netflix that takes viewers inside the company. In one episode, Paltrow takes an executive team, including Elise Loehnen, Goop’s chief content officer, to Jamaica to explore the healing power of magic mushrooms. Part of the brand’s success therefore rests on a staff that is willing to go full-immersion into the products and experiences the company recommends.
Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation Gin Takes Advantage of Viral Fame
Aviation Gin was a small, artisanal maker of gin in Portland, Oregon, founded by Christian Krogstad and Ryan Magarian in 2006. Ryan Reynolds acquired an ownership stake in the brand in 2018, and it was sold to major liquor company titan Diageo for over 600 million dollars in 2020.
A known prankster famous for the Deadpool movies, Reynolds pitched in early on with advertising acumen that sought to create funny viral moments that would be shared on social media. Behind Reynolds was a savvy marketing team with the flexibility to produce “of the moment” advertising such as the following, in which they enlisted the star of a viral Peloton ad to cheekily showcase the company’s flagship spirit.
Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company Finds a Lucrative Niche
Consumer packaged goods company the Honest Company was founded by actress Jessica Alba in 2011 as an alternative to makeup and skincare products that contained petrochemicals and other ingredients that might be potentially harmful.
The Honest Company was valued shy of $1 billion as of October 2017 as it prepared an initial public offering. The company added seasoned hands at that time to its board of directors at that time, such as James White, former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Jamba, Inc., who also held past roles at Jamba, Inc., Safeway Inc., The Gillette Company and Nestle S.A.
By focusing on the lucrative niche of natural products and developing a distribution chain that made the brand a household name synonymous with pure ingredients, The Honest Company now has 83 products ranging from makeup to skincare products and hair care line and can be found nationally in chains such as Walgreens, Sephora and Target.
