Leadership, branding and routes to market: 3 vital ingredients

Nick Verebelyi, Client Services Director at R Design London reflects on The Beauty Symposium and outlines how the eclectic panel of speakers inspired discussion on 3 vital ingredients for business success. Visit R Design London

Billed as an eclectic mix of speakers to inform and inspire, the event truly delivered and actually touched on perhaps 3 of the most vital ingredients for success in business generally: leadership, branding and routes to market.

Kate Tojeiro, Executive Performance Coach of X-Fusion, outlined some of the common characteristics of inspirational leadership drawn from her vast experience of coaching entrepreneurs and captains of industry. A strong sense of purpose – beyond self-interest, gratitude for success achieved, awareness of others, managing one’s own energy – to maintain peak performance, and a fundamental belief in the mission of the business are the traits she observes in truly inspirational business leaders.

Dave Richmond, founder and creative director of R Design followed and showed how design is a critical success factor for all brands, not least beauty brands.

From touching on the designer’s box of tricks including typography, colour, naming, physical components to showcasing some of R Design’s design successes, Dave revealed how the magic ingredient in creating a stunning brand design solution is having a well crafted, brilliant idea.

Finally Malcolm Bell, co-founder of Zaggora and the Hot Pants brand revealed the power of social media in building a global brand and generating sales of over 500,000 units in its first 12 months.

Social media can be a massively influential marketing tool creating awareness, word of mouth type credibility on a scale that would hitherto have been impossible. And for a brand like Hot Pants, it is hard to imagine how else it could have got off the ground – promising and delivering as it does such amazing results that would be hard to understand, let alone believe.

The Zaggora example also demonstrated the role that different marketing tools have to play in the life of a brand. In the case of a new and unique product-led brand, classic tools such as design and visual branding may have a less important part to play in creating awareness and credibility. Whereas more mature brands, selling through traditional retail channels where competition is rife and product differences are less obvious, design has a major role to play.
Ultimately design and brand is the shorthand for all the conversations that take place through media – socil and otherwise. It is the final proof point for the consumer in their decision to purchase.

Which brings us back to the first ingredient – leadership. Knowing how to use the key elements of the mix and inspire everyone in business to act accordingly.