Everything You Need to Know About the New Era of CoverGirl
Including why they’re ditching their “Easy, Breezy, Beautiful” slogan.
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“Easy, breezy, beautiful: CoverGirl.” When a brand’s 60-year-old slogan is so well-known and, yes, even iconic, it can be a huge risk to retire it in favour of something new. In the case of CoverGirl and its recent major facelift, however, it’s a risk that seems to be paying off. The brand’s refresh features a new slogan, “I am what I make up,” and an accompanying campaign that features a diverse range of new CoverGirls: Issa Rae, Ayesha Curry, Shelina Morena, Massy Arias, and Maye Musk. The new move has certainly made waves, inviting a bevy of positive press and hundreds of comments on their Instagram post featuring the new campaign video praising CoverGirl’s inclusivity.
What prompted this sudden focus on diversity and empowerment? Most likely it was the realization that the brand needed a facelift to stay relevant, since many other popular beauty brands (Glossier, M.A.C, Milk) have been moving in this direction for years now and newer ones (such as Fenty Beauty) are creating buzz amongst consumers and the beauty industry. But let’s hear it from CoverGirl itself: “CoverGirl has been undergoing a lot of exciting changes in an effort to continually challenge beauty norms. In recent weeks, the brand announced several new ambassadors who represent the brand mission to celebrate diversity, authenticity and expressiveness.”
Ukonwa Ojo, the Senior Vice President of CoverGirl, explained the motivation behind some of their new ambassadors in depth: “The addition of Issa to the CoverGirl family is a mark of the brand’s continued evolution, at a time when the constant images representing ‘beauty’ in social media make authentic representation increasingly important and infuse new meaning to the wheres, whens, hows and whys of applying and wearing makeup.[And] Massy and Shelina bring additional unique points of view, areas of interest and inspiration. Today, wellness is increasingly seen as an important component of inner and outer beauty, but you don’t often see beauty cross over into the world of sports. We want to change that, and it goes beyond sports, too. People have many varied interests that aren’t mutually exclusive. This is an important element of diversity, and we should celebrate and encourage the freedom of expression that comes along with it.”
Challenging beauty norms is a fantastic goal, but it doesn’t always go well when large corporations try to win recognition (and consumers’ dollars) for supposedly working towards that goal when in reality, they’re only paying lip service to it. Right now, consumers are more vocal than ever about their desire for diversity and inclusivity. Targeting that in a beauty campaign is just smart marketing, and it has been attempted with varying degrees of success in ad campaigns from Glossier’s much-praised Body Hero campaign to Dove’s recent controversial commercial that faced accusations of racism. Hopefully, every beauty brand will not only take note from CoverGirl and strive to feature a diverse range of models or spokespeople, but also need offer an inclusive range of makeup shades and do their research when it comes to how best to promote diversity and empowerment while promoting their products.
Whether the motivation behind the makeover is just smart marketing doesn’t really matter in the end, though, as long as CoverGirl continues going beyond lip service and doing the actual legwork of including a diverse range of women (and occasionally even men) in the world of beauty. So far, they seem to be doing a great job simply by letting their new brand ambassadors step into the spotlight. Click through to read a little more about each of these inspiring CoverGirls (and one CoverBoy).
Photography via Getty Images