When beauty business icon Bobbi Brown wanted to scale her new makeup line Jones Road Beauty, she knew her branding and marketing would need to be vastly different from what was already on the market.
She turned to her son Cody Plofker, marketing expert and direct-to-consumer growth strategist.
As the Chief Marketing Officer, Cody helped Jones Road Beauty to become a well known brand with organic traffic.
The brand reached over $20 million in sales in 2021 and is on track to triple its revenue this year.
“This is a re-birth for Bobbi, this is her wanting to do things her own way,” Cody says.
As a consultant to some of the fastest growing DTC brands, Cody also shares his knowledge in a weekly newsletter detailing what he’s learned from his time at Jones Road Beauty and how he advises other companies like Northbeam and Octane AI.
“To me, marketing is something that you can’t ever master, you can learn so much about it and still need to learn so much more,” he says.
Cody and the team at Jones Road Beauty have taken a more educational approach to their marketing content.
“I realized education was huge because our products are not standard beauty products,” Cody says.
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His strategy was to keep their marketing real and authentic to Bobbi’s vision, while creating content that really connected with their target audience.
“When we started, we just did these super lofi educational videos trying to weave in our brand and Bobbi’s pillars about confidence, empowerment, and authenticity, and just went viral, pretty much tripling our business overnight,” Cody says.
Another way Cody has helped the brand maintain control of their messaging is by staying selective when it comes to expansion and partnerships. Jones Road Beauty remains a direct-to-consumer brand with only one flagship store in New Jersey.
“The beautiful thing about selling direct-to-consumers is you’re able to be a lot more nimble and in control of things,” Cody says. “You could launch a product in a day if you need to, which we’ve done before.”
Controlling their messaging and branding has allowed Jones Road Beauty to cater to older customers, who are often left out of beauty marketing.
“We promote the message of embracing your lines as Bobbi likes to call them,” Cody says.
While most beauty brands are leaning into a younger, Gen Z audience, Jones Road Beauty continues to promote self-love and confidence at any age.
The key to marketing any business these days, Cody shares, is “really understanding why you’re starting your business, and if the market needs it. [Make sure to] pick your market and differentiation points carefully.”
Tune in to the full Shopify Masters episode to learn which trends to keep an eye on and hear more about the marketing strategies that helped take Jones Road Beauty to the next level.
