Glossy Pop Newsletter: Grace Coddington is Merit’s newest face — why older women are the key to the brand’s success

May 24, 2024 Mary

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Since it launched three years ago, Merit, the minimalist makeup brand founded by Katherine Power — also the founder of skin-care brand Versed, Avaline wine, WhoWhatWear and a partner at venture capital firm Greycroft — has focused on a more mature audience.

This focus pre-dates the brand’s celebrity or influencer strategy, said Vanessa Krooss, Merit’s brand director. “It goes back to the reason for being for the brand. … [It] came from this insight that, for adult shoppers who were used to a luxury feeling, [there was a lack of] products that felt elevated and that spoke to her. Katherine [Power] felt like these heritage luxury brands didn’t have the updated ‘clean’ formulas she was looking for. Everything else felt really young and focused on the Gen-Z consumer.” Powers herself is “in that older millennial, younger Gen-X window that is routinely ignored by the beauty industry other, than [when it comes to] anti-aging specific products,” Krooss said.

Merit is not the only beauty brand targeting Gen X. Beauty brands like Iris & Romeo, Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road and Trinny London have all successfully reached this demographic. According to data from Circana, those over the age of 45 represent the biggest market share in prestige beauty. They currently spend about $10.38 billion on the category, and it is their fastest-growing category in terms of spend.

Merit launched in 2021, and in 2023, the brand’s sales exceeded $100 million, a brand rep told Glossy. It is sold at Sephora and on its own website.

In its marketing materials, Merit typically features a certain kind of woman: chic, understated and decidedly fashion-forward. On Thursday, the brand launched “Ginger,” a new shade of its Satin Signature Lipstick with a campaign featuring 83-year-old longtime Vogue creative director Grace Coddington. Merit CMO Aila Morin told Glossy that Coddington has been on the brand’s mood board since before the brand launched.

“We started talking to her team late last year. We were trying to think of the right moment to match with such an iconic person who has shaped the fashion industry over the last two, three decades,” Krooss said. “We wanted to have a very editorial moment, and she’s somebody who is really known for lipstick and wearing very minimal makeup — [not much more than a] statement lip.”

For this reason, a lipstick launch made sense. In the imagery and video captured for the Merit campaign, Coddington models Ginger and Vermillion, true red shades in keeping with her signature look.

Merit has 469,000 followers on Instagram and 174,000 on TikTok. As of Thursday, the brand had posted one editorial still of Coddington on Instagram, a close-up of the lipstick itself and a Reel in which Coddington speaks about her love of New York. In it, she also shares what she loves about Merit: “It is more classic,” she said. Comments on the post from fans call Coddington an “icon.”

“Ginger” was added to the brand’s lipstick lineup in response to customer desire. “Beverly Hills,” a soft peach shade of the brand’s Flush Balm blush, is its bestseller, and customers were either saying, “I want a lipstick to match my Beverly Hills Flush balm,” or they were just using Beverly Hills on their lips, Morin said. Merit has sold one tube of “Beverly Hills” every 2 minutes in 2024, thus far, a brand rep told Glossy.

It’s not the first time the brand has featured iconic women over 40. In September 2022, Merit launched its first and only skin-care product, a bi-phase serum called Great Skin, promoting it with its first billboards featuring 44-year-old model Tasha Tilberg. Great Skin remains its bestseller and the top-selling skin-care product from a makeup brand at Sephora, according to Krooss. The launch of Great Skin became an inflection point for Merit. “Doing an out-of-home campaign with a woman who had great skin, but also fine lines and freckles and all of the things that many women in this age group have, changed the way the brand was received,” Morin said. The campaign shifted the way the brand thought about storytelling thereafter, she said.

More recently, in March, the brand tapped 55-year-old actress Kelly Rutherford, who played Lily Van Der Woodsen in “Gossip Girl,” for a Reel. It was timed to the February 22 launch of the brand’s matte lipsticks but not anchored to it. Merit saw an approximate 200% increase in social impressions during the week it went live. The post currently has almost 1.6 million likes and over 10 million views.

The same is true for 42-year-old Nicole Richie, a longtime friend of Power, who the brand worked with on a Reel posted on May 2. Again, it was nicely timed to a launch — shade extension for the brand’s highlighter, its Day Glow Highlighting Balm, which it recently launched in “Solstice,” a neutral bronze hue. In the post, Richie applies Solstice to her eyes and cheeks before getting in bed with her cat.

As Krooss put it, “We try to take a little bit more of an evergreen approach [to our content], even when it’s tied to a specific launch moment.”

Working this way has encouraged Meri’s customers to create their own routines inspired by the “icons” it taps. “Once people understand the ease of use of the products, and they see how someone else uses it, then they can choose what their five-minute morning routine is. It’s different for everybody … and it’s not necessarily tied to specific products. But we absolutely see a [resulting] lift [in sales],” Morin said.

Merit has not found that working with older talent alienates its younger audience. On the brand’s site, over 50% of visitors are between the ages of 25-45, and it sees the same percentage of visitors who are over 55 as those who are under 25. “There’s so much fear about aging these days, especially in the beauty space,” Krooss said. “But when we’ve shown more mature faces, the younger demographic expresses a lot of excitement and, frankly, relief. Our community in their 40s and above feel represented, and our customers in their teens and 20s look up to these women.”

Collabs of the week

For Love & Lemons x Pietro Nolita

Food and fashion continue to be a match made in marketing heaven — and this fun new collab puts a carbohydrate-focused spin on the smoothie-driven trend popularized by retailers like Erewhon.

Los Angeles-based clothing brand For Love & Lemons and Italian restaurant Pietro Nolita, known for its Instagram-bait “Pink as fuck” design scheme, have teamed on a signature pasta. The flower-shaped Fiori Rosa Ravioli is adorned with edible flowers. The ravioli will be available throughout May and June. “We were interested in weaving together threads of Italian themes in our [brand] campaigns via an immersive experience for our customer, so what better way … than teaming up with Pietro Nolita?” said Lindsay Rogers, who works on For Love & Lemons’s partnerships. Customers who purchase the pasta will receive a 20% coupon for For Love & Lemons, while supplies last.

Margaux x Ciao Lucia

On Thursday, DTC-focused New York City-based shoe brand Margaux launched a sandal collaboration with L.A. apparel brand Ciao Lucia. The collaboration includes one sandal style, The Palermo, in two colorways: black and brown. Each retails for $275.

“Sarah [Pierson, Margaux’s co-founder] and I really admire Lucy [Akin, Ciao Lucia’s founder], who is also a young female founder. We both prioritize a kind of unfussy, effortless way of dressing,” said Margaux co-founder Alexa Roussel. “Lucy came with so many fun references from the late ’90s and 2000s. We riffed on gladiator and strappy T-bar sandals and wanted to recreate something updated for today. The result is a sleek, effortless sandal that is also the epitome of summer. It feels perfect for right now. And after the first five hours of the sandal being live, we’re excited to see that our customers share the same feeling. It’s one of our most successful sandal launches in company history.” Shop it here.

Bikenstock x The Great

For the third time, Birkenstock and The Great have teamed up on a capsule collection of the former’s classic Arizona sandals. This time, the shoes were created via a technique called Western tooling. Each pair is $325.

“Our first launch in November of last year exceeded all expectations — the response from our community was overwhelming in the best of ways. … The next phase of this project [features] a new artistry and technical method that feels close to our hearts as designers and vintage lovers,” said Emily Current, co-founder of The Great. Shop it here.