Cultural Relevance, Strategic Advocacy & Adding Value to Communities | Rimmel London

In this episode of Connected Thinking, we're joined by Davina Kumal, Global Director of PR, Influencer Marketing & Advocacy at Rimmel London. With over 15 years' experience leading global strategies for brands including Morphe Cosmetics, r.e.m. beauty by Ariana Grande and Jaclyn Hill Cosmetics, Davina shares her perspective on culture, community, maintaining agility and staying relevant in today's landscape.

We're chatting about:

→ How Rimmel brings a startup mindset to a heritage brand

→ What brands get wrong about cultural relevance

→ Why Rimmel evolved its iconic tagline from "Live the London Look" to "Live Your London Look"

→ How advocacy teams are becoming the most strategically important function

Stay tuned for more episodes of Connected Thinking, our series of chats with standout voices from the world of marketing, where we unpack what’s trending, what’s shifting, and what’s coming next..

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Connected Thinking, our series of chats with standout voices from the world of marketing, where we unpack what's trending, what's shifting, and what's coming next. I'm JR, your host and a group account director here at Scene Connects. And today I'm joined by the wonderful Davina Kamal, the global director of PR and Influencer Marketing and Advocacy for Rimmel London. With over 15 years of experience, she's led global influencer and PR strategies for brands including Morphe Cosmetics, REM Beauty, Jaclyn Hill Cosmetics, and more. So very excited to get into chatting with you. But welcome, Savina. We're really excited to have you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Rimmel was a major brand in the beauty industry. Huge amount of heritage and history, 192-year-old brand, is that right? Yeah. I've worked with heritage brands a lot over the years. I've even worked in-house. And so I know one of the challenges of having a heritage brand is obviously how you find ways to keep the brand relevant. Um, I know that there's always a lot of red tape with heritage brands of like making sure that we're honoring the past, but also perfecting how we make the brand like future-facing. How have you found it within Rimmel to try and keep that like startup mentality?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, for sure. I think heritage in any brands, with a heritage brand, it can be your biggest strength or it can be your biggest constraint, right? It just depends on how you're willing to interpret that heritage for the culture of today and how you keep reinterpreting it. A brand like Rimmel, they've had time to build all of that emotional equity. It's recognizable, you've got that recognition. Whereas a lot of indie startup brands can take years to build that. If you're a creator, founder brand, the goalpost is completely different. So we've been focusing on modernizing that for Rimmel. So our tagline, Live The London Look, and the shift to live your London look is a good example of how we've started to modernize that. And it might seem like a really simple shift, but the impact is quite big because you're going from having a London beauty look to how you can globalize that and what that means in different markets in terms of individuality, self-expression, and how you can live the London look wherever you are, but live your London look. And that's the big shift. Um, so that's been quite key for us as well from a heritage point, um, as it's, you know, something that's quite longstanding for us as a brand. From a startup mentality point of view, for me and my background, it's really bringing in that agility to teams into your decision making, but also knowing when you need to slow down and just really look at everything with a bird's eyed view and thinking about how you can incorporate that into your decision making and making sure you are at the forefront of culture. And behind all of that is, you know, a team that you have to maintain the culture to make sure that they feel empowered to experiment, try new things, test and trial, which isn't always easy in a heritage brand, but it's how you can reinterpret that for today's culture and have that proximity to culture as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

I think it's really important to have that balance, isn't it? Of like knowing how we can respect the heritage of the brand, but still make those shifts that are gonna keep us driving forward. And I think it's very clear that what you guys are doing has really supported that transition. You touched on culture a lot. And I think that's something that, you know, it's a bit of a buzzword in our industry, right? Everyone wants cultural relevance, everyone wants to kind of make sure that they're keeping up with what's trending or setting trends. How are you guys staying at the forefront of cultural relevance and trends, etc.?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

I think cultural relevance has become the most overused marketing brace, and not everyone knows how to interpret that. Sometimes it gets confused with reacting to a trend or making something go viral, which isn't cultural relevance in my opinion, and it's really about how brands can be invited into culture and not interrupt culture in the wrong way. So it's more about thinking, what do people care about emotionally? What do they care about creatively? How can you be in those conversations, like and fitting into that naturally as a brand as well? For me, culture is um something that's really lived, not manufactured, and really thinking about relevance. So how do that community speak to each other? What's the language? Do you understand the fandoms? Um, there might be a certain terminology that's used within said community that as a brand you really need to understand, and it could mean different things for different communities. Um and I know you'd resonate with that as well, right? So it's just really thinking about that and how brands can be relevant in a natural way.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I actually really love what you said there about how uh culture is lived, not manufactured. I think that's such an important point because it's absolutely right. Like, especially when so many people in the industry, and like again, another buzzword that's being talked about a lot in our industry is community. And those two things, you know, were not popularized by the marketing industry. Those are things that exist in and of themselves. Culture is such an important part of the human lived experience, as is community. So we have to be really careful as marketers, is like how we're tapping into those things, because before they are purchasable, sellable, transactional, they are lived experiences. And I think that's really important as a brand, especially in beauty, to honor that and to make sure that everything that we're doing in our marketing and in our kind of advocacy is centering and like really honoring those communities and the culture is of those communities as well. So I really love that. I think that's a really, really nice point. Sticking with the kind of the point of culture, beauty is one of those industries that just moves so quickly. Um, it's so fast moving culturally. How do you approach keeping sort of a global brand like Rimmel relevant without constantly just chasing the trends? Because we see it all the time, right? When you're scrolling TikTok, there's always a new trend. Same on Instagram. Usually it's like a little bit later than the ones that are on TikTok, or they just sort of work so independently. How do you find kind of working with Rimmel in those environments where there are trends to jump on all the time? Like, do you jump on all of them or are you a bit more considered with how you kind of move with culture in the beauty industry?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

You know, it's such a buzzword as well, and then it comes back to that culture bird's eye view. But it's really more about being culturally aware versus being trend reactive all the time. Because if you're not culturally aware, you can't really be trend reactive in the right way. And when is the right time to be reactive versus being culturally aware, which should be the first point. Um, and I think a lot of brands can try and chase everything, but then lose their identity along the way. So it's really about bringing it back to what are your values? You know, what are those key community pillars or cultural nuances you would like to play in? And I think when you're looking at it from a global point of view, it's having that red thread, that commonality that can translate, but then also looking at it at a more granular level on a local view, because you need that depth and those nuances in those markets and those different regions that can inform that because what culture looks like globally is one thing, but then in those different markets, it might be interpreted a little bit differently.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

We traditionally think about things in quite a Western way, but actually when you're working in a global for a global brand, so interesting to think about like all the different nuances and how a campaign in one market would land so well and like pop off in another market, like it would probably just flop because there's all of those nuances. And uh it's obviously like quite an obvious point, but I think actually when you get under the hood of it, there is so much to consider and really think about to make sure that you're actually again honoring those cultures and kind of worldviews, because not everything obviously is that Western lens. I think we can get really caught up in that, especially being based in London.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah, and we did um a really great campaign of like Beauty Live From, which is which stemmed from Live Your London Look. So we activated in key markets, London, of course, our home hometown, and Melbourne, Miami, and to name a few, and we really thought about what that meant in those markets. So it was really about then taking that Live Your London look, but then integrating that into a campaign that was really tangible across the globe. And that's worked really, really well for us. When we activate in each of those different cities, it feels different and the vibe is different, and that's exactly what we need to achieve of just translating that beauty.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

You have been in the industry for a long time. You have worked in PR and influencer and advocacy for over 15 years. So long before the creator economy has become what it is today. What do you think are some of the kind of biggest shifts that you've seen in our industry over that time?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Influence is no longer just about reach. It's about credibility, the consistency of that message and how creators and brands are connecting and making that cultural impact. It's the mindset shift of not thinking of it as this is a collaboration, there's a you know a traditional element to how we used to work. And don't get me wrong, like those things still need to happen at a baseline, as an always-on, but we really need to be thinking with a more bird's eye view when it comes to culture and then how that has shifted the creator like economy overall.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

I love that. I think um, I mean, you're really speaking our language because the amount of times that we've had to kind of talk to brands about kind of reducing the messaging and not being super tight on every landing every single key beat, because what really the brand is doing is killing their chances of a really successful piece of content. And we've had to do a lot of educating, even now, still about that to our clients, because when you prescribe the message and prescribe the brief in such a like all the minute details, the content, I would say 99% of the time falls flat. Because you're right, the creators absolutely know their audiences, they know how to reach them, they know how to keep them interested. If we're not tapping into that expertise, then really what's the point in working with those creators? So I think that's uh absolutely like a big shift that has happened over the last few years, especially. But even still, I feel like there's loads more room for improvement. Like brands need to be aware that actually to get the most out of influences, we have to work with them and let them have a bit of creative free reign because that's when you're going to see the best results.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I completely agree with you. And I feel like it's finding that balance. And if something doesn't feel right, whether that's the creator or the agent having that conversation, you need to have that transparent relationship and dialogue to find that balance. And I actually did a talk recently, and this was quite a common question that came up. Some creators or even agents don't feel they can, they don't want to lose a deal, right? But it's not only about that. Like, how are you making sure that this resonates with what people want to see because they know their communities?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I remember when I started in the industry, and really we were still working with bloggers, like people who had websites and what up. Those were the days. Those are the days, right? And how much the industry has changed and matured.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

But then Substacks come back.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Exactly. And we love that. Like I'm loving this reintroduction of long form as well. Um, I think it's so interesting seeing like where the industry's going and how it shifted so much. It was really the infancy of the industry, and I think seeing where it's gotten to today and actually the direction it's going to, like, more and more brands are investing in influencer and advocacy. And I think we're only going to see that increase because as a consumer, we are so cynical when it comes to being sold to. Because we've been in the environment where we're constantly fed sales messaging. We're now in this environment where actually, as consumers, we we don't want to see that. We actually want content that's gonna either help us, educate us, entertains us. Brands are up against so much more now. They're not just up against other brands, they're up against creators, they're up against creator brands, they're up against AI content. Like there's so much competition now in so on social and within the influencer space that I think the brands that are gonna win are the ones that really work with creators rather than just prescribing them content. Um, so yeah, it's really interesting. I could literally sit and talk about this all afternoon. So uh we're gonna leave it there. Um, our next question, we're, you know, we're really seeing at the moment how the how the lines between PR, influencer marketing, and community are just blurring completely. Um how do you think advocacy teams need to evolve within brands?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I think advocacy teams are strategically becoming the most important for brands for many different reasons. And one of them being people don't experience brands in specific channels the way they used to anymore. They're experiencing brands in conversations, whether that's like this, whether that's you know, in real life or online, wherever those conversations might be in those different digital spaces. So it's about how brands can really participate in those conversations in the right way to have a way into those communities. And advocacy teams need to really be thinking like cultural intelligence teams now. The way it's shifting is like completely changing, making me feel nostalgic going back to those days of like how it was and what how far it's come and what the future of it is going to be, even with AI, and how you really adopt that into the right places and staying authentic, both on the brand side and the creator side. So, what I mean by strategic cultural intelligence teams are teams that are on the forefront of culture, what's emerging, what community makes sense for us to be invited into to have a voice in, and really thinking about how they can take part in that in a natural way and not interrupting it. And then it's really gone from just campaigns to more long-term relationships with those communities. So, how can you how can you give back to that community and support that community? And those advocacy teams should really be thinking about that long-term. So it goes beyond your relationship with a creator and it's your relationship with that creator, but that creator's community or that moment that you're being part, you're invited to participate in that moment of culture as a brand. But then how you actually create that long-term relationship with that. And I think the brands that will win at it are the brands that really add value to that culture and that community. And if you're not adding value to your point earlier about, you know, we're seeing so much of being advertised as such a saturated space, they can see beyond that. You can see when something's forced, when something's transactional. If you're not giving that back, then you're not really tapping into culture or being cultural relevant in the right way.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

We're just so much savvier now, as consumers. And I think that's you're absolutely right. I actually really love how you spoke about advocacy teams and just your language. I think it's it's so interesting and like really important the way that you talk about it. It's like almost flipped on its head because a lot of the time in marketing teams and brands, we're constantly thinking about how can we get what we want? How can we get more sales? How can we get more views? Like that's what we're thinking about. But actually, how you were talking about it is like, what can we give those communities that will make them advocates for our brand? And I think that is the way that we need to start thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

That's how you scale.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Absolutely. Because when you're purely thinking about what we can extract from those communities, it's never gonna land in the same way. We see that as consumers. We know what you're doing as brands, you know? So absolutely, I think that's like a really important takeaway from this conversation for sure. Well, we've come on to our last question, which actually ties in really well with what we were just talking about. We know that audiences are way more critical of brand messaging. Do you think that creators hold more cultural influence than brands themselves? I think it's quite an interesting topic because I think traditionally brands have held more of their kind of cultural significance. But with this maturity of our industry, of the creator commerce industry and just the creator economy, I'd love to hear your take on whether you think creators are actually more cultural, culturally significant than brands.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

I think it really depends on the scenario and the context of how you're approaching it, whether you're a creator or on the brand side. Sometimes, yes, and in some cases, no. But often the creators have built that trust, going back to that earlier point of just really understanding their audience. And a brand can never be into that far deep in that data or that community. You know, they're not the ones replying to that creator's DM every single day. That individual is, and that's that's where it's different. But then, you know, those two working together is where the magic happens, and that genuinely those ones that perform the best are the ones that are really like co-created together. So I think brands really need to be like close to that and really understand those communities um even deeper. But yeah, I think it really just depends on the scenario. But also when you think about creators as media channels or you think about them as having as cultural voices, that's where brands can really leverage because you're getting a firsthand insight to that community and that culture, and that has so much value in it within itself. So it's a bit of a like a swinging kind of um approach because it can shift. The culture can be in the creator's hands at one point and then it can be in the brand's hand, but then you know, when it comes together and it's participating at that right moment is just when it when it's key. But the main thing is keeping that longevity of it and the long-term relationship versus just you know a one-off approach to it because that isn't participating in in the right way.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, a hundred percent. I I think you're so right in the co-creation piece being where the magic happens because you're you are right, it is a pendulum. There are certain scenarios or certain campaigns where the creator is going to have more of the cultural relevance, but then you know, with a heritage brand like Rimmel, you do have so much cultural relevance that, you know, you can create some really iconic moments that creators can tap into. So it definitely is a bit of a kind of depending on what you're trying to achieve. But I think, again, the part that matters is that co-creation piece between the creator and the brand, because there are some collaborations where you can really tell that the creator has had creative license to work with the brand to create something. And in my opinion, you can really tell when a creator hasn't been given that opportunity and it's just the brand saying, This is our campaign, we want you to face it. You know, there's such a difference between those two things. And I think it is really important that we work creatively with our creators or talent that we work with.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah, and we recently did um a partnership with Red Bull um, the beginning of this year, and it was a great example. We worked with Lily Smith, who's a gymnast, and it was all for our thrill seeker, Megalift Muscara, and she did a beam routine. If you haven't seen it, you need to check it out. Um, and again, it was us really co-creating that and actually thinking of it in a different way and what beauty means to that community. Um, and it, you know, it performed really well and it was a really nice start of the future of what's to come of like different ways with within beauty and different communities.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Sounds great. Well, those are the end of our questions, but I've got two, maybe three quick fire round questions. Um, a first one is favorite book or podcast that you would recommend to our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Book. This one I read quite a long time ago, but it's always stuck with me is um Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. It's really good, it just makes you pause and think are those things like really important? And just actually spend time on what matters, both like personally and as a marketeer. Like I think it's really important for teams. Um, podcast, loving Rise with Roxy, Roxy Nefuse, that's a nice one. I'm a bit of a wellness person, so that one's really good for me.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And then our second quickfire is um the best piece of advice that you've received.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Slowing down to speed up. Because often when we talk about having a startup mentality or having agility, you automatically think, okay, I need to speed up. But sometimes you need to slow down, have a bird's eye view, pause, slow down, and speed up. So yeah, that would be love that.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

And this one I'm just gonna throw in there because I need to know as a beauty fiend, what are your kind of top products that you could not live without?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Um, well, I'd be biased if I didn't say my rim or button yet, but I love this one. Um, we've just launched it, it's amazing. You should try it. Um, I've got one today. So that one, I think an SPF, you can't go wrong, you need an SPF if we're talking skincare and vitamin A. Um, and a good settings pro.

unknown 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Love. Well, that's all we have time for today, Davina. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

It's been such a treat to get into some of these topics with you, and yeah, we really appreciate it. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Thanks, JR.