Fenty Beauty Inclusivity

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During a time of social change and justice, here are a couple of brands I wanted to point that have always instilled diversity and inclusivity in their brand messaging. A few that come to my mind are Fenty Beauty, Cover Girl, Carol’s Daughters, Clinique, HoneyPot, Shea Moisture, and many more.

Fenty Beauty has become a well-known company in the beauty industry with an engaging digital presence and effective strategies that includes a diversified product line and campaign. Fenty Beauty offers cruelty free beauty and skin care products with makeup formulas to match all skin types and tones, housing 50 different shades of coverage. The award-winning product, Pro’Filtr, came out and everyone wanted their hands on it because of its soft matte long wear formula. According to Celia Shatzman of Forbes Magazine, the company was developed for two years where Rihanna launched online and in over 1,600 stores and across 17 countries (Shatzman, 2017).

foundation is one of the most areas in the beauty industry that has a huge void for women at extreme ends of the shade spectrum. And so, I wanted to make sure that women of all skin tones were covered, and they could be included in what I created”

– Rihanna

Fenty Beauty is founded by musical icon Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty, where she champions diversity throughout all of her marketing campaign strategies. Fenty Beauty was launched in September 2017 in partnership with French luxury conglomerate, Moet Hennessry- Louis Vutton (LVMH), in the Kendo Beauty division. The line was “created for women everywhere so they would be included,” is the motto founded by the company. Rihanna explains that “foundation is one of the most areas in the beauty industry that has a huge void for women at extreme ends of the shade spectrum. And so, I wanted to make sure that women of all skin tones were covered, and they could be included in what I created” (Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, n.d.).  After launching her line in Sephora it’s reported that the beauty line did $100 million in sales in the first 40 days (Strugatz, 2019).

The line houses products like their famous Killawatt highlighters, liquid foundations and foundation sticks, bronzers, gloss bombs and Stunna Lip Paints, makeup brushes, with a plethora of other products. Similar to how Michael Porter discussed sustainable differentiation in the “What is Strategy?” article, Fenty Beauty has established just that by creating consistency across their marketing initiatives and product lines (Porter, 2000). For example, Fenty Beauty encourages diversity and inclusion in all of their messaging while helping to shed light on issues that are usually frowned upon in the beauty industry. From an interview in Vogue Magazine, Zoe Ruffner interviews Fenty model, Tia Jonsson. The young model stood out by having an autoimmune skin disorder, vitiligo, which is something Rihanna values in her brand. This skin disorder causes patches of skin discoloration in various areas of the body and it has helped her and countless other models like Winnie Harlow become included in Fenty Beauty campaigns (Ruffner, 2018).

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