Amber English on The Estée Lauder Companies’ Digital Evolution and Reimagining Prestige for the Modern Consumer

(soft music) How do we work together? How do we work best with our partners? Let's ensure that we are the fastest, most agile partner that anyone can work with. And that can be really complex sometimes in organizations, especially with our portfolio brands, but also within just branded or luxury organizations that you've got marketing teams, you've got brand teams, you've got product teams. And so bringing something to market or even making fast decisions around either investment that you're moving or creative assets you're trying to get live, those things can sometimes slow you down if you don't have the right processes. - Welcome to today's episode of "Brave Commerce." - I'm Rachel Tipograph, the founder and CEO of MacMac. - And I'm Sarah Hopps at our chairwoman of Profitero Plus. - And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in commerce for the world's biggest brand. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Sarah, do you have a master's as in a master's degree? - Like a post undergrad? - Yeah, like an MBA or yeah, master's in business management. - I have nothing of the sort. I was in a stage where I was like, do I need this in order to advance? And you know what, the answer would have been yes, I honestly, I don't think I could have spent another day in school than I did. That was like the most I could have handled. My house dad is a master's. Most of the people that I work with have master's. It's just wasn't for me. And I would say my all the job training was probably stronger than most of my college education, my undergrad education as it is. You don't have one either, right? - No, I mean, I think this is one of the things that also ties me to you. My wife has three degrees, she loves to learn. And I'm like, no more degrees. - Wait, wait, let's just be clear. You and I love to learn. But she loves to learn in a classroom. - Exactly. I'm not going to besmirch anybody who enjoys learning. I don't think I'm going to besmirch anybody. Now let's forget a master's or anything like that. It just wasn't the best way for me to look for information. - Yeah, I learned by doing. I remember there was actually a moment in my childhood. I was four years old and I was watching people rollerblade on my block. And I really wanted to rollerblade. My parents weren't home. I was home with a babysitter. And I put on a neighbor's rollerblades. And I kept doing it. And obviously I kept falling until I figured it out. And for me, that moment has stood with me my entire life where I just realized, like, I learned by doing. I just don't learn in a classroom. - Oh, thank God you actually lived to tell the tale. I mean, it was a dangerous lesson. I'm glad it all worked out for you. But I also think it all speaks to your perseverance a lot. As much as it does speak to, you're learning by doing. - But anyway, you know, here are you and I. We are very fortunate that we get to spend our waking working hours engaging with executives all day long. Many of you probably have more education than Sarah and I. And it's interesting. We are about to bring Amber onto the show. Her bravest thing that she ever done, she shared. She doesn't have a bachelor's from college. She has an associate's degree. And here's this executive who's leading thousands of people at one of the world's most global consumer product portfolios. And even I was taken aback, even though I don't have many degrees. And it's just amazing to realize that there are so many different types of executives out there that don't fit the normal pedigree, quote unquote normal. I'm doing air quotes right now. I would agree with that. But I do think even in a not so recent episode, Diana Housling talks about this a whole lot. About what boxes need to be checked in order for people to be good at whatever that next stop is in life. I was also taken aback by Amber's bravest thing. By the way, pops for having a really interesting bravest thing. Some are better than others. But I will say in particular is the fact that it came up after a 20, 25 minute conversation where I just continued to be blown away by everything that she said. So without further ado, let's bring her on to the show. - Today we are so thrilled to have Amber English, president, digital and online of the Americas at the S.A. water companies. Try to do that five times fast. - Thank you so much for joining us Amber. We're thrilled to have you. - Of course and pumped to be here. - You guys have been doing some really, really interesting stuff and you Amber have been at the helm of a lot of the real big movements at S.A. water. So let's start on your foray into Amazon. I mean, that's a really, really big decision. Many prestige brands in a market that sells to the longest of tails. How do you think about pertaining your brand's equity, elevating it when you get the same pixels as everybody else? - Yeah, it's a deep and thoughtful question that I think I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one that we took very thoughtfully. And yeah, I think it's also a question that you have to answer for each individual brand. We at the ELC companies, it's a portfolio of brands and every brand has its own positioning, plays in different categories, et cetera. And for us, I think we really stepped back and said, what's the consumer doing? What's the consumer telling us? And the insights that we stared at to really help us craft if this was the right decision for certain brands, what would be the way we needed to do that and the how, and then what would be the right timing? And I think the data that was staring us in the face was consumers were telling us they wanted to find our brands on Amazon, not just from a commerce perspective, but they were searching for our brands. They were wanting to read reviews about our products. They were wanting to understand how it was working with certain age groups. So if you were in the 20 to 35 age group, what does it do for your skin versus something else for someone else? And so we stared at a lot of that data really thoughtfully and said, okay, this is a place where consumers are going and are researching our brands. We need to have presence there. Once the decision and the question of yes, we need to be there and the insights were there, then it became really a question around, how do we do this exactly to your point around in a way that keeps equity and a way that is really true to elevating our brands? We had no intention of wanting to just list our things in a new catalog on Amazon. We really said, how would we do this? To one, really lean into what Amazon's strengths are, the website and really how the Amazon consumer operates is very different than even our own brand.com sites and a lot of brother partners. And so if you look at our sites today on Amazon, our brand stores and our PDP pages, they're different than a lot of our other distribution places. They're very different than our brand.com. We took our lead from Amazon and they said, here's how to think differently about how consumers shop our PDPs. Here's how they scroll through reviews faster than they might scroll through imagery or things like that. So we're super proud of, I think one, that we did it in a way that was really true to our brands. And I think we're really proud of the results, not only from how it looks, but also the new consumers that we are acquiring. The customers that we're already there searching for our brands can now get them delivered same day, they can get them delivered in one day. So we're really pleased that it sort of is a complimentary place that consumers can shop our brands and frankly also just learn about our brands. A lot of people forget that Amazon is a media platform. And so if you ignore the fact that it's just this place for people to buy stuff, it's also one of the world's largest search engines. And so you can't ignore the fact that people are learning about your brand through the content reviews and all of those different things. And so you have to really focus on ensuring the right content and the right storytelling is being done, which we focused a ton of our efforts on. - Then element of invisibility, if you will, if you're not there, right? And if people are seeking you out, could it mean that they're saying, oh, now did they discontinue that product? Did, you know, what might have happened? Or the invisibility could breed switching. So there's all of this, it's almost like it's a hidden, we call it the coma, the cost of missing out. There's just this hidden component to it. If you don't end up showing up. But despite that, that must have been a very difficult, uphill decision within your organization to explain that and to translate that, if you will. - Yeah, the last several years have been so transformative for ELC. Large transformation has happened across all different facets of the business. And I think for us, it was, yes, a big decision. I think, like I said earlier, deciding which brand when to go. And then of course, making sure that it's complementary to the existing business that you have. And so for us, yes, it was a big decision. But once we had all the confidence in the data and the insights, it actually was a really easy decision to make sure that you're serving the consumer because all of those insights were there. And so listening to the consumer was I think a key lesson for us there in really just not getting in your own way around thinking, you know, what may be true for one consumer may not be true for a consumer today, even if you have a very historic heritage business. - So the Amazon story was a very public story. There's probably other elements of ELC's transformation that we don't know about. And just curious, like when you guys are gonna look back at the business five years from now, what do you think you're gonna point to is the handful of things that really changed the inflection of the company? - Yeah, I think the key, I mean, Siphan's been quite clear and public about Beauty Reimagined, which is really a pin and a moment for the company. The way that the consumer is shopping today is super different than even the way that they were shopping five, 10 years ago. And so being able to respond to that and catch up, frankly, is really important. That has everything to do with where your brands are seen, not necessarily just distributed, but you have to think differently about how consumers might be experiencing your brand. It could be through being at a dinner party and someone says, oh, gosh, you gotta try this lip balm. It's the best. Or seeing a billboard, or seeing a commercial, or being on TikTok. And so it's not just a one-size-fits-all where you used to walk into a store and be able to control this beautiful experience. Now consumers are being influenced in many different mediums. And so thinking about how did we react and respond and frankly get ahead of that new world has been, I think, at the core of really what's so exciting about the future. So the key parts of this are really meeting our consumer where they are, talked a little bit about that with the Amazon decision. Another one is how we work. A big part of the internal elements that we are staring at as an organization is how do we work together? How do we work best with our partners? Let's ensure that we are the fastest, most agile partner that anyone can work with. And that can be really complex sometimes in organizations, especially with a portfolio of brands, but also within just branded or luxury organizations that you've got marketing teams, you've got brand teams, you've got product teams. And so bringing something to market or even making fast decisions around either an investment that you're moving or creative assets you're trying to get live, those things can sometimes slow you down if you don't have the right processes. And so it's a key area we are staring at to say, how do we make sure we're the fastest internal organization? We are really pushing decision making down in the organization to ensure that folks are able to feel empowerment and quick decisions closest to the consumer. And that hasn't always necessarily been an area we've been able to be strong at in sometimes of the portfolio dynamic that we have. So and then also real time data and analytics is at the core. And sometimes I know people have been saying this for years. It's not new to have data to stare at. But I think the ability to now, because we're so fragmented and where our brands are distributed, where our brands are being talked about, you can't control all this anymore. It's not really in your hands as a brand to say, who's going to go viral on TikTok or who's going to talk about something with our brand? And so really thinking about what are the data and analytics infrastructure and foundational elements you need on an hourly daily basis to be able to allow the teams to make key decisions around either putting the gas pedal on to go deeper or pulling investment back or switching up creative. AI is obviously having a huge impact on our ability to do things quickly. But I do think that's been a huge shift in just looking ahead to say, the next five years are going to be, I think, an acceleration of what we've already seen. I think the category of beauty is super, super durable. But how people shop at has evolved. And I think if we didn't expect that to continue to evolve, I think you might miss the boat. So we're trying to think internally about how we organize ourselves and how we set up systems with our partners to make sure we can do that. I would say the objection that I often hear around real-time data with large conglomerates like an estate lotter is people recognize the premise of it. And then they go, but we're locked into these multi-year agreements where we can't even act on some of the real-time signals that we're getting. So as you just think about the contractual relationship with the ecosystem, what do you think is going to happen? Yeah, that's a fair point. I think it's not going to happen with every channel. You're going to have certain channels that you're going to be able to move faster on versus others. For example, you think about some of the offline channels, planograms, and calendars are set a year in advance. And I think the agility you're going to have in some of those channels is going to be limited. A lot of our partners are starting to look at data differently, too. And so they are saying, hey, we can't work on a 12-month calendar anymore. We need to work on three, six, nine. And things need to be flexible and loose in some ways. So yeah, I do think that the industry at large is going to have to move to that element. But you're right. There's going to be signals that we're going to be able to get for our brand.com business and react on them super fast. There's going to be elements of data we can stare at for our creative and our media that we can switch out in an instant. And then there's going to be elements that we're not going to be able to. And so then you sort of go into the next slide. Let me see if that was an interesting learning. How do we mechanize that and make sure that we go forward with something for the following year? But you're right. It's going to matter by channel and by element. It's interesting. You were talking a lot about being where the consumer is at. A lot of these things often can find the face of something that is so sensory, like beauty purchases. What has astounded me, and it started even before COVID, is how many beauty purchases happen online relative to other categories where a sensory experience took longer to adopt. I mean, just something as simple as pre-COVID, people were like, I'm not going to buy ice cream online. That's something I need. I'm worried about melting, or I'm not going to buy an avocado online because I need to know if it's exactly the rightness. And yet there's something that the beauty industry has done to make the purchasing possible, even though you're removing the touch, the smell. How do you make that tango a digital and physical work? Yeah, I think it's exactly, it's accepting the premise that it's a tango is sort of the first step in my mind. If you talk 10 years ago, people were like, wow, certain categories are just going to move online. And I think that is not true. I think that there is a ton of categories, beauty being one of them, where the importance of offline and digital is actually a dance. And they actually complement each other. Now, is there a consumer who's been using Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair for 30 years, and she just wants it on refline? Absolutely, 100%. And she might not want to walk in to her local brick and mortar store to get that. And she just wants and said it and forgot it, understood. But there's also consumers who might be sitting in a store looking at a product or have seen something on TikTok and say, oh, I want to look at that next time I'm in store. And they look at it and then they pull up their phone and they either go to our brand.com or they go to another retailer's website and they read reviews. And they look at imagery. Sometimes the imagery on.com is so much complementary to Azure Standing and Store because none of the kiosks have the imagery that you can experience online. And so I think thinking that there's one experience for one consumer is the myth. I think that consumers are shopping in a really dynamic way and utilizing lots of different mediums in a single purchase. Not all consumers, but I think the tango exactly as you said is exactly that. You have to accept that your imagery on brand.com might be serving a consumer that's buying offline in a store of one of your partners. And that's awesome. And that's OK. And we want our brand.com to service our consumer so that she can make a high confidence decision around the product that she's buying. And I think also on that same point, you've got to be really clear about what role each distribution channel plays. And I'd be lying if I said all of us on the brand side didn't want every consumer to come to our most flagship beautiful equity building experiences. But there's a reality that consumers might choose a different medium or might choose a different channel. And that's OK. And meeting them where they are and ensuring that your brand is consistent, ensuring that the experience they have with your brand, whatever touch point they choose to have, is really high touch and high value. And so if you're someone who wants to go have your skin touched and a 30 minute consultation, you can go do that. That's a really amazing experience that we offer. If you just want to learn and read and be sort of on a self-guided tour, there's tons of digital experiences, including brand.com. But all of our retail partners have the same content and all of that as well. There's also a consumer who says, I know what I want. And I want a same day. Amazon plays that role for us too. So there's been moments where we've said, brand.com needs to be flagship. You've really got to go deep and say, what does flagship mean? And what features in UX do we expect on flagship that a consumer expects? And then you have to match that with, what are the investment choices we're going to make, whether it be in passing class gift wrap, or paid media, or super fast shipping, versus the ecosystem of distribution that might already be serving the consumer in some of those features where a brand.com customer may not value that stuff. They may not value super fast shipping. But man, do they love their gift wrap, right? So you sort of have to go deep and understand what role each distribution channel plays. And then what consumer insights you can glean from each of those things. The customer who shops our brand.com is a very different customer than shops many of our non-brand.com channels. And so understanding who she is, how she likes to shop, what she values is a really key element to then being able to make decisions around, well, how do we continue to build this out to be best in class for her? You're talking about how multi-dynamic the consumer is. I'm curious, at Estee Lauder, from an org design standpoint, is the person who's working on D2C also being recognized for their halo effect for sales on Amazon. Because we're talking about how interconnected the system is and the end of the day, KPIs, drive behavior, and how are you guys reflecting that back and how you operate? Yeah, great question. We have an organizational structure where the brand GMs own the brand P&Ls. And so it's irrespective of what channel it comes from. If it's D2C, that rolls into the brand GM. If it's Amazon, that rolls into the brand GM. So we may have different people running the sort of expertise day to day, because understanding of brand.com is different than Amazon versus offline. But the total P&L is holistic. And so that allows our teams to be able to make decisions on what's right for the brand and how does the brand show up. And then you think about macro elements. If you took a brand like Clinique, you have to think very broad around how is Clinique showing up for either a big launch? Is there's obviously a plan on how does that show up on brand.com? How are we thinking about demand generation media? How are we thinking about spokesperson partnerships? How are we thinking about how we go to market on Amazon? When is it launched on brand.com, et cetera? So all of that is all single-threaded through the brand GMs that are really the CEOs of their businesses. But then all of these different channels have a role that ladders up into those P&Ls. Absolutely. Fascinating the way you think through all of those different components. I think where my mind is mostly blown is how the magic happens. And I don't know if you're comfortable with this. But if there's any example you could give about how something has launched throughout the consumer journey, whether it's a new product or a new iteration or variant, that could really bring that to life. If not, no worries. Yeah, I think it's different for every product. I don't have an example pop of mine, but I'll share one of the things we're sort of thinking through right now is our first half plans for fiscal '26. Our fiscal year just started on the first. And so when you step back and you look at all the things I just talked about, all of these different distribution choices, all of these different media and marketing letters, and you have a product, you sort of have to first think about, like, OK, what's the product? What's the price point? Are you priced appropriately for where the consumer or sort of trading of that product might be happening today? Going back to my point earlier about saying, you can talk to yourself about saying, we want to launch something exclusively on brand.com. Well, yeah, you could do that. You absolutely could do that. And that would be the sort of brand way to do it. But realistically, it's not the consumer way to do it. And so really sticking yourself in the consumer lens to say, what is the best way to launch a product that allows consumers to, A, learn about it, B, access it, C, get it quickly, and have a great experience with that product. And so, yes, thinking about, like, do we launch something with an early lead on brand.com, or do we give a early lead to our retail partners that might then put it on an end tap or give it some big splashing moment? Those are all considerations, as we do think about launching a product. Or there's an example a couple of months ago, Mac Nudes campaign came out. And it was this really brilliant execution of bringing back old shades from the vault. And it was all in the package in this beautiful bundle of nude shades that had really gone away and been discontinued. But we brought back, put a ton of marketing around it. They sold out super fast. It was this really fun, pent-up demand of consumers really learning the math lipstick is sort of iconic in so many ways. But we thought differently around what partners do we go to market with that are going to get this exclusively? And then do you launch it sort of broadly, whether it be brand.com or et cetera? So there's lots of different ways. But I would say it's bespoke. There's no playbook that exists that says, this is how we go to market with something. It's a very thoughtful sort of you sit down and you say, if it's a lipstick with this brand, what partner would really resonate with this? And that's all the way from distribution partners to celebrity faces and all of those different inputs that you would put into bringing something to life. - Well, Amber, we could pick your brain forever, but we've got to ask you our famous last question, which is, what's the bravest thing you've ever done? - Yeah, so the bravest thing I've ever done is I chose not to go back to college. And I'll give you some context on this. I spent 14 years at Amazon before I came to ELC. And I joined really junior and worked my way up the ranks. I remember a time where I was building out a team. All of these people around me were these MBAs and these grants with these fancy degrees. And I went to fashion school before I went to Amazon. My goal in life was to be a buyer at Nordstrom. I found my way through jobs at Gap Inc and Macy's. And then Macy's did a series of layoffs. I was working in the Seattle office at the time and they did a job fair. Amazon was one of the companies that was there. I had no intention of working in tech. I got a job at Amazon and stayed for 14 years. Fashion school at the time, I was with them in San Francisco. I got an associate of arts degree. And about seven or eight years into my Amazon career, I was hiring these MBA grads and thinking, oh my gosh, I sort of had this insecurity around my education. And am I qualified to manage them? And am I qualified to lead this really smart group of people? A mentor gave me some really good advice. She said, you should go talk to someone that you respect and ask them their opinion. And at the time, Doug Harrington, who's the CEO now, was running consumables. And I sent him an email to say, can I take you to coffee? And we had a coffee. And I just said, listen, you are sort of the epitome of the high level education. You're obviously in a great leadership position. Should I go back to school? Is this something that's gonna limit me? And he looked at me and he said, do you want to go back to school? And I said, no, it makes me want to throw up. The thought of like having to leave the job that I love going back to school, I hated school. I wasn't a great student. It just wasn't my thing. And he said, then treat Amazon like your MBA. And it was the best advice because it gave me this permission from someone who had sort of taken a very different route and had the education to say, like, there's tons of different ways to do this. And again, back in that day, you know, no one was sort of public. There wasn't the Mark Zuckerberg. There wasn't the Emma Greed who were like, you know, now it's something that people, I think talk about more openly, but I remember feeling this just insecurity. And it was such good advice that released me from that. And I just leaned into it and I said, I'm going to take every course. I'm going to talk to every person at Amazon. And I really, it just changed my mindset on really thinking like, I'm going to outwork. I'm going to outpustle. I can learn anything. And so yeah, in the position that I am today, I have an associate of arts fashion, virtualizing degree. But I say I got sort of all my education on the job and from really amazing, smarter people around me. - I think that is an amazing story for a lot of people who probably feel similarly around degrees and executive roles, especially at large organizations. I too hated school. I chose the entrepreneurial path, but it's amazing to hear that. You wouldn't expect it coming from someone in your seat. - Thank you. - Amber, we will be following your leadership at Estee Lauder and beyond. Thank you for sharing your insights. - Thanks so much, you guys. This has been great. - If you like what you heard and you want to think more about your own professional development and what is needed in today's marketplace from a talent standpoint, go check out the latest episode we did with Diana Hosling, the second episode that we did with her where she talks a lot about this. And of course, if you like what you heard, please share on LinkedIn, tell a friend, thanks for listening. (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, global chief brand officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the AdWeek podcast network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice. Meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights and visions for the future. That will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.