Are You An Estée Lauder?!

Between the article I wrote about Nike making the mistake of thinking they could just shove their way into the female market for sports shoes—without exhibiting any of the passion for what women actually care about in that arena—combined with Kim Kardashian being the new picture-perfect athlete for a Nike resurgence, I can’t help but think of Estée Lauder. Not that she ever once in her life wore running shoes...

Say what you want, but from the time she was very young, Estée Lauder loved beauty—specifically making women’s faces look made up and making them look beautiful. She really did. She insisted on putting her creams and makeup on every single woman she ever ran into—hundreds of people. And her family? They had it every day.

She was single-minded and totally committed from a very early age, and not just to the success of it all, but to the actual products she created. In her bathtub, with her uncle, who taught her everything he knew. There wasn’t a store that carried Estée Lauder that she didn’t open herself. As she said, she would take a bus and a donkey to get wherever the women were so she could put the creams on them. Why? Because she believed they would work. And she loved women and their desire to feel beautiful.

She was hawking her wares for free in a beauty salon in New Jersey when she was still in her teens. A woman, beautifully dressed, walked in, wearing a blouse that Estée Lauder thought was stunning. She went up to her and said, “That is the most beautiful blouse I’ve ever seen. Could you tell me where you got it?” The woman turned and looked at her and said, “I don’t know why you want to know where it came from. You could never afford it anyway.” Then she turned and walked away.

Estée Lauder said it was the most humiliated she had ever been, and in that moment, she vowed to prove that woman wrong every single day. And she did.

It clearly motivated her. But to have that kind of single-minded commitment—where 24/7 you are focused on building a customer base—you better believe in the product. You better love the product. You better think it’s the best product in the entire world in the genre in which you’re playing.

I have a story that is true. If you need to know the genesis of where I got it, email me (Info@Blue2Media.net), and I’ll tell you.

Estée Lauder was standing in line during the St. Patrick’s Day parade one year with someone who worked for her and his wife. He was in the C-suite at Estée Lauder, and this was her first time in a line to meet Cardinal Law. The line was moving slowly, and she was enthralled with what was happening. She tugged on his jacket and said, “Jack, Jack, why is everyone kissing his hand?”

“They’re kissing his ring,” he explained, “which is a custom in the Catholic Church because the ring symbolizes his attachment to God.”

She immediately turned to his wife and said, “Sandra, do you have our new perfume?”

I’m sure it’s no surprise to any of you who’ve ever known anyone employed at Estée Lauder to know that his wife did have the perfume in her handbag.

“Give it to me!”

She took the perfume, and just before she got to the Cardinal, she poured it all over her hands. She took his hand and started rubbing her hands all over his before kissing the ring. She was putting her perfume on his hands and the ring.

Jack explained to me later that she wanted every woman who came after her to smell her perfume when they leaned down to kiss God’s ring. She believed that if they ever smelled it again, they would recognize the scent and ask the person wearing it what it was.

Now, you have to admit, that’s a kind of commitment that you and I generally do not have to anything we do.

But look at the greats—from Spanx to Estée Lauder—and you’ll find they’re not just committed to success. They are committed and believe in the product they are carrying forward.

In this new world of fast-forward quickly and make seven figures faster than a million likes on a post in hopes you might just go viral, this methodology is definitely taking a backseat.

But I think it’s going to come back.

I think we are in a saturated market of quick fixes and get-rich-quick opportunities that have nothing to do with somebody’s passion for something real.

So sure, you can put Kim Kardashian all over Nike if you want. But I don’t think it’s going to bring women to Nike. Remember, Nike was founded by a runner—a passionate runner who believed that a running shoe would be the answer to his and many other people's prayers for their sport. And he was right. And Nike became the Estée Lauder of running shoes.

I don’t think Nike is the Estée Lauder of my walking shoe.

By the way, someone was writing a biography of Estée Lauder in the 1980s, and when she found out it was going to be unflattering, she quickly wrote an autobiography to get it to market first. Her history does have a lot of unflattering moments. It also has a lot of passion.

They did a small printing of her book when they launched it because it was really about getting her version of the story out before the other book. But they only did one printing because, ultimately, she didn’t like it. There aren't many copies out there. I paid a few hundred dollars for my copy. The last time I checked online, if you want one, you’ll have to pay $600. I’ll loan mine to you for the cost of postage.

I think it’s the strongest book on how to sell that I’ve ever read.

She was first in so many ways.

She was the first to do a free giveaway to get people to buy other products. She wanted to sell women perfume, but they were never willing to buy it for themselves because they felt it should be a birthday present or a Christmas gift—not something they bought as a personal luxury.

So she created Youth-Dew, which was really a perfume in a bath oil. $135,000,000 in sales the first year. Forty years ago, that was a boatload of money.

When a store said, “No, we won’t carry you,” she went straight to beauty writers. She went in and actually put her products on their faces to show them how much better it was than everything else. They wrote about it. Then the stores had to take her in.

The woman was indefatigable. I love that word.

Are you an Estée Lauder?

— Christine Merser

Christine Merser has been a leading marketing strategist for over thirty years, working with companies, politicians, and individuals to achieve groundbreaking success. Her innovative strategies and forward-thinking approaches have inspired others to redefine how they reach their marketing goals. Known for her curiosity, creativity, and ability to adapt to ever-changing landscapes, Christine continues to shape the future of marketing with fresh perspectives and actionable insights.