Maybelline's digital marketing strategy is a far cry from founder Tom Lyle Williams, early advertising

 

When my great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams founded the Maybelline Company in 1915, he placed 1 1/2 inch ad in the Classified section of movie magazines, like "Photoplay," or the "Police Gazette".  He also had a radio show called the Maybelline Hour, where he did live shows, often with members of the Maybelline family. Eventually he placed full page, glossy print ads in magazines and was the first cosmetic company to place commercials on television.  Today Maybelline New York, uses digital marketing to focus people talking on their own social networks. However, Maybelline still uses Tom Lyle Williams original strategy of promoting beautiful images in his advertisements,  causing people to talk about it with their friends and family.

Tom Lyle Williams genius in the 1920's through the 1960's was contracting Hollywood's biggest Stars to represent Maybelline. He never used his own face or promoted himself, like every other cosmetic mogul in the industry did.  He did this to protect the Maybelline name and his family from public criticism, because he was gay and had a 50 year relationship with his lifetime partner, Emery Shaver. Today Maybelline's Celebrity partnerships to keep the talk going with their customers. 

For example, Maybelline's collaboration with supermodel Gigi Hadid continues to generate news in fashion media. In addition to being featured in the brand's advertising campaign, Hadid partnered with Maybelline on a makeup collection. The buzzworthy model also devoted her personal Instagram — with 40 million followers — to the new collection bearing her name.

Although Tom Lyle Williams used what ever resources available to him during his lifetime, he never had the opportunity to use the internet or social media in his marketing and advertising campaigns. Today Maybelline New York not only uses Celebrities in their internet and social media marketing and advertising, they also now partner with paid influencers, as well as 

everyday influencers — those friends, family and peers who have large social networks and enjoy sharing their opinions. It ships free product samples to consumers and invites them to share their experiences by posting reviews and product-related content on social platforms.

Just as Maybelline's original founder, Tom Lyle Williams, understood his target markets, Maybelline New York continues to motivate it's customers to spread the word by one on one talking on and offline. 

My blog post today was inspired by Brad Fay, chief strategy officer at Engagement Labs. read his article at 

Brad Fay is the chief strategy officer at Engagement Labs. 

Credit: Engagement Labs

Aspiring entrepreneur's take away from The MAYBELLINE STORY

 

I was 15, my grandmother suggested I tell the Maybelline Story in my speech class.  I did and not only got an A, but also gained a lot of overnight popularity. I decided at that young age I wanted to write a book someday so the story wouldn’t be forgotten.

What’s the core of the story?

Overcoming obstacles and succeeding. Believing in yourself and making your dream a reality. Like the new Maybelline New York tag link says, “Make it happen.” 

19-year-old entrepreneur founded an Empire with a $500-dollar loan and its effect on him and his family is a blessing and a curse.

My great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, founded the Maybelline Company in 1915 and though he reached great success, he and his partner lived in obscurity to protect the Maybelline brand from public. The family’s blessings and curse came after the sale of the company. Some of them weren’t ready for overnight wealth.

So basically the book evokes the time-honored story of the small town boy who aspires to make it big and then proceeds to do so – in spite of neighbors who figured he wouldn’t amount to anything ---is that it?

Yes, that’s an excellent point. Rags to Riches and becoming a great success when everyone said he was a dreamer. 

 Have the principles of being a successful entrepreneur changed in the meantime?

The desire to aspire, achieve and create something is part of our DNA. However, the will to keep going is the challenge. Today social media, I think more and more entrepreneurs are creating brands that have a chance to thrive much faster than say, advertising in the classifieds like my Great uncle had to use in the 1920s.

The driving Spirit that motivates a person to produce and market something they believe in never changes. It's an internal spark that is ignited by some inspiration

1.Tom Lyle’s secret’s to success included

2.  Accountability: Though people called him a DREAMER, he didn’t rely on wishful thinking.  He stepped up to the plate and worked to make it happen. He had the fortitude to persist in spite of significant obstacles. He was Inspired and responsible for making things happen. Action is what separates doing from dreaming.

 What can an aspiring entrepreneur take from your book?

My story is about overcoming the obstacles that constantly try and silent the entrepreneurs voice. To never stop believing in your dream and succeed in the end. No matter how long it takes.

Michael Levine, one of the most successful PR Agents in Hollywood, captures the place of Maybelline when he says that every girl he ever dated as a teenager had Maybelline cosmetics in her pursue – and that even in later life, his dates always had some Maybelline product in their purses.  Today, it’s impossible to walk through a drugstore without seeing Maybelline products. That seems to speak both to the power of Maybelline marketing and its place in our culture …  

Maybelline has always been known for it’s Advertising and marketing. Tom Lyle Williams was known in the business as The King of Advertising. Maybelline had a tremendous effect on changing the culture in the early years.  Today, Maybelline’s standard of beauty is still holding strong with the younger generation. Maybelline continues to change with the times and keep up with what women want.

Amongst the firsts started by Tom Lyle Williams and now taken for granted was his use of Hollywood starts to endorse his products. What other firsts did start?

  

Carded thn bubble wrapped merchandise and the twirling displays we take for granted today in stores.  They were the first to do “Before and After” effects in print and the first to use special effects on TV in the early 1960s. They also were the first to use page, colored advertising on the back of magazines. And the list goes on.

Reading the book, one gets the picture that Tom Lyle Williams had had some failures and then when the early Maybelline products began selling well, he was almost surprised by his own success. Is that what happened?

In the early days the whole family took suitcases to the train station and wheeled bags of mail home in a wheel barrel because the Post Master told them their mail was jamming up the system. This was the first revelation that the American girls were ready for this new eye enhancing product. It was a shock for the whole family as Maybelline continued to expand over the years.

Was there some good old-fashioned luck here? A part of Maybelline’s success was that the times were changing? It was no longer assumed that women who used makeup were – as they used to say – of loose morals?

It was the flappers who launched the Maybelline company and Silent Films.   Tom Lyle featured Stars Silent Film Stars endorsing Maybelline saying they wore Maybelline in public. Husbands threatened to divorce their wives if they dared to buy the product. But, in the end the women won the vote and the right to beautify their eyes.

Was there some regret when L-Oreal took over Maybelline.

The company sold to Plough Inc in 1967. Tom Lyle did regret selling it. He wished he had turned it over to the younger generation. But you’ll have to read my book to see why.

Maybelline's marketing strategy in the early 20th Century was the key to their early success

In the 1920's Maybelline marketed  to the trade, who purchased the product

 and sold it to the consumer, in  drugstores. 

At the same time, consumer advertising, brought customers, in the drug stores, where they purchased their (mascara) Maybelline.  Marketing to the trade, Advertising to the consumer, that was the kick started Maybellines Brand into the global market over 100 years ago.   

Lash-Brow-Ine, Maybelline and Liquid Maybelline, were sold in boxes of one

 dozen and placed next to the cash register where impulse buyers were

 willing to give it a try.

Today, Maybelline, is owned by L'Oreal of Paris and called Maybelline New York.  The Maybelline Brand is still, the biggest make-up Brand in the World.

  It's roots, began with a $500. loan from Tom Lyle's brother, Noel James

 Williams, in 1915. Today, is a multi- billion dollar business.  

Read all about it in, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty

 Behind It and learn all about the man and the family behind the original

 Maybelline Brand.

1960's introduced massive competition, here's how Maybelline stayed on top of their game

In the face of massive competition, Maybelline employed a national sales team, under Rags Ragland,

to cover independent drug, chain drug, and discount houses, to check on Maybelline's established Eye Fashion Center installations

and then send turnover orders to the indicated wholesale drug houses.

This was a major move, and expanded Maybelline's budget, to over 6 million dollars, but it was worth it. 

Rags Ragland, with his remarkable communication ability was able to get the sales team to establish a separate operation, composed of 8 widely experienced men to run the whole thing.

These men represented Maybelline only, while many National sales teams, represented up to 40 companies

 at a time

With this set-up, Maybelline successfully met the big competitive threat,

and with the effective development and promotion of their display selling units, that sold to Woolworth, and was now used by K-mart,

they stopped their biggest threat, Chesebrough Ponds. from developing and marketing their competitive eye cosmetic items... 

and after about a year and a half, it was reported they lost many millions of dollars.

Maybelline was the most successful cosmetic company in the world, with a marketing sales team headed by

 Rags Ragland. 

With Maybelline's great success in 1966, Tom Lyle Williams, knew the time was right to sell his company to Plough Inc., a Pharmaceutical company in 1967, for 133 million dollars, or close to one Billion dollars, at today's rate of exchange

At the time of this mailing, August 1, 1966, I happened to be visiting my great aunt and uncle, Eva and Ches Haines, at their home on Lake Mercer, where this package was delivered.   It was that Summer I met my cousin Jerry Westhouse, Eva and Ches Haines, grandson and it was Jerry who found this interesting package of Maybelline history, still at the Lake Mercer home, and sent it to me.

A letter enclosed with the package from Rags Ragland, explains the beautiful displays he designed and truly what gave Maybelline the priceless "shelf value" it had and still commands today almost 50 years later.

My cousin Jerry Westhouse 1973.  Read more about his car racing history, http://www.maybellinebook.com/2014/06/in-celebration-of-hitting-one-million.html 

Visit my beautiful new website Sharrie Williams Author sharriewilliamsauthor.com

Drop by my hilarious 1964 High School Diary Blog called Saffrons Rule at saffronsrule.com

"What made Maybelline a Giant in it's Field" Interview with Maybelline Executive Harris A Neil Jr. Explaining growth and production strategies

 My name is Harris A. Neil Jr.  I worked at Maybelline  in Chicago from January, 1959 to August, 1968, a period of great growth and excitement in the history of the company. Among the wonderful people I had the privilege of working with were your cousin, Tom Lyle Williams Junior,  and Harold “Rags” Ragland. I was very much their junior, 28 years old when I started in 1959. The math tells you that I’m now 82. 

 As Production Manager, in a highly marketing-oriented company, I would like to explain the packaging program, as it came down during those years of growth and new product rollouts. The changes and improvements you mentioned in your book, finally resulted in a whole new look and methodology, and kept our production floor plenty busy.

 I would also like to explain the outside vendor program, which people nowadays call “supply chain management” or simply “logistics.” That involved both packaging and product components, which became more of a tightrope act as volume and product increases pushed us forward. It was even more exciting because we only had a finite amount of floor space for warehousing and production.

     I want to comment on the Maybelline management style and interactions as I saw them from my “worm’s-eye” view. I still remember it well, and learned as I moved on in life that it was unique, but it was I think bewildering to the Plough group who did things very differently.

     And yes, I want to give my thoughts on the Plough merger, as it was announced and as I lived through it for the ten months I remained with Maybelline afterward. It became a different company immediately without Tom Jr., Rags and Dorothy Molander. That topic alone is one that maybe will make this story worthwhile all by itself. Also, and only in this subject area, we’ll have to discuss some negative events, but they happened and we’ll face them head on.

     Then there’s T. L.’s gift to his long-time employees. I couldn't find the letter outlining the details of the gift, but I clearly remember the basics, and can give you a pretty fair idea of the scope and impact of this wonderful gesture on his part. 

1. A SHAKY START

It all began in one day in January, 1959, when I received a phone call from an employment agency on the north side of Chicago, where I lived in a bachelor pad with three other friends. I had registered with that agency earlier, part of a job search that I’d been on for weeks, going back to late 1958.

The nameless voice on the phone asked if I was available to talk to a local company about an opening they had in “inventory control.”

I said yes, and he set me up for an interview at the Maybelline Company, a mile up the street from our apartment. I got there at the scheduled time, to meet a Mr. John Cole. The street address was 5900 North Ridge Avenue, and as I entered the building I saw a large sign proclaiming

MAYBELLINE

World’s Largest-Selling Eye Beauty Aids

It wasn’t too late to chicken out, but I swallowed hard and opened the swinging door and walked in. After all, I was so broke I couldn’t even afford gas for my ’53 Ford, among other things.

John Cole couldn’t have been more gracious. He was older than me by ten years or so, a trim and friendly man. He gave me a brief rundown on the company and the job in question, and politely asked me about my background and experience. After that exchange I guess he thought we could go to the next step, and made a call to a Mr. Tom Williams.

That cleared us to walk down the hall to another, larger office. I met Mr. Williams and we continued the interview, the upshot of which was a job offer. John offered a starting salary of $5,500 per year, with annual raises to be discussed on each anniversary. The company would also reimburse my employment agency fee, about $300, after 90 days on the job. I accepted, and we agreed that I would start on January 19. (Tom Lyle Williams Sr. Birthday.)

As I learned very quickly, John would be my boss and trainer. He functioned across all operating areas of the company, with heavy involvement in purchasing and supplier relations. Also, I learned that Mr. Williams was the son of the company founder, T. L. Williams. At that time and for years afterward, I heard the elder Mr. Williams referred to only as “T. L.”

John needed me to help him with the heavy detail in keeping the inventory balanced. In turn, this function required heavy contact with the wide range of packaging and product suppliers, located literally across the country at that time. This would relieve John to concentrate on his many other responsibilities, both external and internal.

That was the thinking and high hopes as we began. No luck. Things began to unravel almost immediately because I had no direct experience in that kind of work and couldn’t avoid making an almost immediate mess of things. Of all things, Tom Williams saw the disaster shaping up, and stepped in personally. The main tool in daily inventory actions was a hand-posted weekly inventory report listing all Maybelline items, starting with the finished-goods quantity, followed by the quantities of all component parts that related to that item. Well, those numbers were supposed to shout for action if they were out of position, particularly if they were dangerously low. Shout? Those numbers just sat there on the report, and they all looked the same to me.

Okay, Tom and John could have fired me right then, but I guess they figured I was the bird in hand, and they’d be farther ahead if they could salvage me rather than starting over again. So Tom would get that weekly inventory report ahead of me, and leave me with an “action list,” hand written, with detailed instructions to call such-and-so and order this much material. While this burdened Tom with what I should be doing, it was something he had done in his earlier years with the company, and he was good at it.

Slowly, slowly, two things began to happen. The inventory began to resemble the profile that Tom wanted to see, and I began to understand what needed to be done without Tom’s time and attention. In my case I was like a newborn bear cub, coming into the world unable to see for the first part of his life, then slowly gaining vision and focus.

If Tom hadn't spent the time he did in this early phase of my Maybelline experience, this would be the end of the story. Both he and John had salvaged my job, and now I was out there in solo mode, thanks to them. In sum, that was a close one!

Stay tuned tomorrow.  I will be posting more of Harris A. Neil Jr.'s story everyday for the next four weeks.  If you are interested in business, marketing and production, you won't want to miss the inside workings of a Mega-Company from the man who was there and saw it all unfold everyday.