Beauty fangirls — and there are a lot of them, more than you would think — have always loved a cult product. Even before the web’s hiveminds sprung up, some products have been treated with reverence, thriving on recommendations from mothers to daughters, makeup artists to lucky amateurs. Some of these are simple: my mother told me to use Pond’s Cold Cream and I consider it a miracle worker. Others are more luxurious. Clarins’ Beauty Flash Balm, for instance, or YSL’s Touche Éclat concealer.
But clever beauty houses capitalised on this phenomenon via the internet, using blog publicity to create a frenzy over limited edition zeitgesty nail polishes or top-dollar Tom Ford lipstick (that will be €46, please, thank you.) In the complex world of beauty blogging, new products are hyped up long before they are released, and if they’re promising enough the hype can cause them to sell out the day they’re launched. Done right, it’s a marketer’s dream. Maybe blogging did put the power into the consumer’s hands, but remember that we are still the ones spending £9,000 on some coloured goo for our faces.
