Kylie Jenner: The Rise of an Instagram Queen
At the age of only 20 years old, Kylie Jenner has already created a global empire. She starred on Keeping Up with the Kardashians when she was just 10, became one of the top ten youngest people to hit 100 million followers on Instagram, and was the youngest on Forbes Celebrity 100 list.
This year she’s set to cross another milestone: the youngest billionaire ever.
Kylie is expected to overtake Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (who crossed the mark at 23 years old). Despite only starting in 2015, Kylie Cosmetics, her personal brand of cosmetics, has already generated more than $630 million worth of revenue in makeup sales. That doesn’t include profits made through modeling and television appearances.
How did the baby of a reality TV show become a modern marketing genius?
The Family Built on Fame
The Kylie Jenner brand can be traced backed to the popular reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians back in 2007. Kylie was the youngest of a major mixed family, which included Kendall, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, and Rob Kardashian. The show followed the lives of each family member both at home and in their professional projects.
From there, Kylie continued to build her brand through modeling and hosting opportunities, such as The Hunger Games Premiere and America’s Next Top Model.
But Kylie’s movement into the fashion and beauty industry began with endorsements for two nail lacquers from Nicole by OPI, from which she made $100,000 in 2013. She then launched personal clothing lines with Kendall Jenner for PacSun and Topshop, a jewelry line for Pascal Mouawad Glamhouse, a shoe and handbag line for Steve Madden, and hair extensions for Bellami Hair.
New American Startup
From Apple and Amazon to Disney and Google, some of the biggest companies started as personal projects in a garage. Kylie Jenner and other modern marketers are building startups in a new kind of garage: social media networks.
Kylie was only 18 years old when she first launched Kylie Cosmetics. Her first announcement was of a lip kit, which she promoted with a selfie and the hashtag: #KylieLipKit. It included a matte liquid lipstick, lip liner, all branded with Lady Gaga-esque packaging. The entire stock sold out within a minute before the website crashed.
“This is all me and I put everything into these lip kits,” she tweeted during the launch, “I hope you guys love them as much as I do. Definitely more to come.”
And more did come. The brand now offers eyeshadows, blushes, highlighters, and brushes, some priced up to $325.
Here are a few tactics that made the Lip Kit Craze, and all the other Kylie Cosmetics products so successful:
Limited Stock…On Purpose
One reason for the craze is the exclusive, limited supplies of the products to begin with. Instead of mass producing in the tens or hundreds of thousands, Kylie focuses on individual products or bundles at a time. When she does release them, she only produces a few thousand. That’s why they inevitably resale three times the selling price.
The Family Brand
Kylie continues her family’s dynastic legacy of fame and sometimes controversy. Her mother, Kris, had already established her name with her own production company. Her father Caitlyn (formerly William Bruce), was an Olympic gold medal decathlete. Her siblings and half-sisters have all gained notoriety for their modeling, entrepreneurship, and television personalities, particularly Khloe, Kourtney, and Kim, who have also dated or married significant figures such as Kanye West, Tyga, Travis Scott, Tristan Thompson, Lamar Odom, and Scott Disick.
Kylie has used her family’s star power to catapult her brand further, through promotions in music videos, television shows (such as Keeping Up with the Kardashians and her own spinoff, Life of Kylie), and modeling gigs.
Controversy
Much like the rest of her family, Kylie is no stranger to controversy. Fans have long suggested that Kylie underwent surgery to make her lips appear fuller, especially after comparing her likeness to her earlier photos. When media pressed her on allegations of lip injections, Kylie either ignored or denied claims, simply saying it was a change in her style.
Kylie eventually admitted to using temporary lip fillers on an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Despite the controversy, it only created greater hype and demand for her products.
Social Media
Above all, Kylie represents a new generation of influencers utilizing social media to boost their reach. Much like Trump’s presidency, social media has created a way to engage with audiences, and target specific personalities without spending on major television ads or traditional marketing campaigns.
In fact, Kylie’s reliance on Instagram means she can cut out a lot of the costs that other fashion brands need to deal with- including physical locations, marketing, and PR. Instead, manufacturing is outsourced to Seed Beauty, a California-based beauty brand producer, sales are left to Shopify, and the rest is handled by her 5-person team. Kylie retains 100% equity in her own company.
It’s not just Instagram either. Kylie uses Snapchat and Twitter (25.2M fans) to publish video selfies along with cross promotions with other figures.
Kylie’s Brand Power
Kylie’s unique name and position in the market makes her brand resilient in the face of newcomers and competition.
But as we’ve seen in her past projects, such as the TV spinoff Life of Kylie, a science-fiction young adult book, and her own official app, the Kylie Jenner brand extends beyond the makeup world.
It’s unclear where the Kylie brand will go next, but one thing is clear: She can take on nearly any industry by instantly marketing her products through her social media to millions of highly-engaged, highly-dedicated fans.
