New York City is lending its iconic I <3 NY logo to your lips.
For her first brand campaign since joining the company three months ago, Glossier’s new chief marketing officer, Nicole Solórzano, is utilizing an iconic Milton Glaser design on its new “I <3 NY” balm dotcom as a juicy ode to the brand’s New York City roots. It’s also the inspiration for a broad campaign rollout across retail, social, and the website that pays tribute to the city, where the company launched. But after years of decreasing relevance and revenue, and some internal restructuring over the past several quarters, it also signals where the brand is headed next.
Glossier defined the modern “clean girl” beauty brand when it launched in 2014, and over the next near-decade rode that millennial pink wave to a 2021 series E funding round that valued the company at close to $2 billion in 2021, according to Puck. But after years of scaling, product dilution, and a jockeying for place in a crowded sector (hey, Rhode and Rare Beauty), it hasn’t since been able to maintain that market dominance.
The company laid off more than 80 employees, or one-third of its staff, according to Forbes, in 2022. Its products launched in Sephora in 2023—a coveted partnership in beauty—but its valuation is now reportedly below $1 billion. It’s also closed nine of its 12 stores.
With new C-suite leadership including Solórzano and CEO Colin Walsh, both from the haircare brand Ouai, Glossier is in turnaround mode (hello, Gap), and the “Balmdega” campaign is its first major marketing campaign, which Solórzano describes as “looking back at our core to go forward.”
Anatomy of a turnaround campaign
The campaign has a few tiers. Its social campaign, “24 Hours With Glossier,” features day-in-the-life vlogs from creators Asmeret Berhe-Lumax, Coco Baudelle, Ariella Starkman, and Penda N’Diaye + Elena Howes—as well as Glossier’s founder, Emily Weiss—set to release next week. The idea is to compliment Glossier’s refined brand with less polished user-generated content that the 3 million online followers of Glossier can follow along with, even if they aren’t in NYC themselves.
“This is the first time in a really long time that we’ve been on the streets with a campaign and having it be a little bit more grassroots style,” says Solórzano.
Then there’s the retail element at its Soho flagship, which is made over as a New York City bodega or “Balmdega,” in a way only Glossier could. The front of store has shelves of bodega snacks and New York City-themed exclusive merchandise, including hats, tees, and crates full of locally harvested apples, bearing a “grown and packed by Glossier” stamp.
It will host events over the next six weeks, including partnerships with local favorites like La Cabra coffee and Elbow Bread bakery. Glossier also gave 10 bodegas hundreds of the new balms to sell. Localization creates community building moments with brand fans, but also FOMO-inducing online content, much like Victoria’s Secret Pink’s retail strategy. Glossier intends to lean into this more, with new key lead roles to develop localized activations in its three major markets with a remaining retail footprint: London, New York, and L.A. The brand is also seeking a new creative director.
“It feels bigger than a balm,” says Solórzano. “I’ll put it that way.” Outside of its Boy brow, Balm Dotcom is the company’s most iconic SKU, and a fitting choice for this moment, she says.
“We want this to be a brand coming-of-age story for Glossier. New York is our home. So it’s the origin piece of a little bit of a look back, and it should feel sort of nostalgic for the people that have been on the journey with us. But then it’s definitely an eye towards the future of where we’re going,” Solórzano says, referring to planned brand activations and campaign touchpoints like its social vlogs.
The company plans to have fewer launches, with more splash and impact. Its social content is an opportunity to rebuild brand loyalty. “This is, I think, a really good indication of how everybody can expect to start to see Glossier start to show up for these moments,” Solórzano says.
A new playbook
I spoke with a few shoppers waiting in line outside Glossier’s SoHo flagship about what brought them to the launch that day. The first group got there at 6:30 a.m.—four hours before the store opened to the public. “I love Glossier, but I feel like it’s different because at least with this [launch] I get to see something that I’ve never seen before in other places,” Briana, 26, told me. A fan of the brand’s fragrances, she commuted from Queens, adding, “It takes me a good two to three hours to get here.”
Another group arrived at 9:15. Kemisha, 28, was there both to experience the in-person event and get the balm. “I haven’t used the Glossier balms in a while, but I think it works pretty well,” she said. “That’s why I was like, ‘I don’t mind coming and seeing.’”
And that’s really the goal of this campaign. It’s likely too early for a new product launch under this C-suite, because the production time frame is often 12 to 18 months. So the aim is to reintroduce the brand to consumers, increase positive brand perception, and give it some early momentum, with—hopefully—some product innovation to follow.
“We’ve always meant to be edited essentials” says Solórzano. “That’s always been Glossier’s philosophy. So we’re coming back to that. Yes, through product, but also through storytelling around those products, [and] how they fit more importantly into people’s lives.”
Its core color will continue to be an important part of telling that story. “We live and die for Glossier pink,” Solórzano says. “It is certainly not going anywhere.” Considering the fact that the color became so ubiquitous it’s now visual shorthand for a generation, that would be a lot of brand equity to toss out with the trash. But Glossier does plan to bring in more secondary colors and design codes. Those will “come into the fold in a more prominent way as we look ahead, especially into next year,” Solórzano says. One example: Big Apple red.
