The Bailey Blog

Easy, breezy, beautiful. A slogan for the elite makeup users of the world, right? The Giseles, Tyra Banks and supermodels of the world…until now. Now, it’s the Ellens too.

 

Cosmetics company CoverGirl recently announced that Ellen DeGeneres is its newest spokesmodel.

 

  

 

In my public relations course at Michigan State University we had a discussion about this choice for CoverGirl. Having a famous face attached to its products attracts an audience, and CoverGirl has had a long line of celebrity spokesmodels, including flawless faces such as Tyra Banks, Christy Brinkley, and Rihanna.  But simply picking a beautiful famous face person gets boring after a while and a company can run the risk of losing the connection between its brand and target audiences.  

 

 

That’s precisely why picking Ellen as the next CoverGirl has brought forth an extremely positive response. 

 

 

As CoverGirl puts it Ellen was picked because of her, “smarts, confidence, and beauty that flows from the inside out.”  Not all women can agree that they have supermodel gorgeous skin, but they can believe that they have those same characteristics inside themselves.

 

One of the most important aspects in public relations is relating to your audience.  In this case, it’s relating to a large female audience – and to relate to them, CoverGirl needed to connect with them.

 

Ellen connects with millions everyday on her show through her dancing, jokes, or friendly personality. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t love her.

 

In my class discussion, mostly a class of women, we couldn’t get over the fact that Ellen is one of the coolest celebrities we know, and how much we all want to be more like her. That’s what CoverGirl got right. They went beyond the confines of a physically beautiful model and picked someone millions of women love and admire.

 

Not only is Ellen unconventional in her appearance, she is 50 years old and a lesbian, two other firsts for CoverGirl.

 

An unconventional choice like this is also a great way to shake up some news coverage in a positive way. Case in point - blogs all over the Internet that are singing praises to the company for the choice and CoverGirl is back in the news more than ever.

 

Photo courtesy of CoverGirl.com. 

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.