How I Got Here: Adore Beauty’s Head of Brand Marketing on the importance of backing yourself
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PARIS TILLEY
Words by Seraphina Nicholls
“You’re not always going to have the perfect forecasting or data to back your ideas, so it really does rely on you to confidently sell them to the wider business.”
Have you ever stalked someone on LinkedIn and wondered how on earth they managed to land that wildly impressive job? While it might look like smooth sailing, there’s no doubt been a heck of a lot of hard work involved in getting there.
So what lessons have been learnt and what skills have proved invaluable in getting them from daydreaming about success to actually being at the top of their industry?
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Welcome to How I Got Here, where we talk to people who are killing it in their respective fields about how they landed their awe-inspiring jobs, exploring the peaks and pits, the failures and the wins, and most importantly the knowledge, advice and practical tips they’ve gleaned along the way.
This week we’re picking the brain of Adore Beauty’s Head of Brand Marketing, Chelsea Healey. With a natural knack for entrepreneurship, began her career journey at 18 when she started her health and wellness bar in Tasmania. After a year, Chelsea came to the realistation that it wasn’t the health food that drove her ambition but instead a passion for creating a brand story – also known as marketing.
Chelsea sold her business and headed to Sydney at age 19. There she was able to nurture her leadership, networking and big-picture thinking skills, launching her own creative and marketing agency. After five years in the industry, she came to Adore Beauty with a desire to push out of her comfort zone and drive the already-successful brand strategy into a sparkling future. Below, Chelsea shares her journey so far.
What do you do and what’s your official job title?
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My official job title is Head of Brand Marketing for Adore Beauty. I look after the brand strategy and implementation for the Adore Beauty brand as well as our private label portfolio.
My job is to shape the Adore Beauty brand into a compelling proposition that’s as differentiated as it is relevant and then amplify that to build our awareness and foster a strong community.
Take us back to when you were first starting out. Did you study to get into your chosen field, or did you start out with an internship/entry-level role and climb the ladder? Tell us the story.
I grew up in a small town in Tasmania, with my heart set on becoming a dietitian. My mum convinced me to take a gap year, so I spent the year after I finished school starting my own business – a ‘health’ bar. The business grew faster than expected and it was during that process that I realised it wasn’t the clean green food that was driving me, instead it was the love of creating a compelling brand story and a team around that.
At 19, I decided to sell the business and move to the big smoke in Sydney (or the ‘mainland’, as Tasmanians refer to it), where I set out on a mission to learn as much about marketing as I could and create my own form of study.
I started a creative and marketing agency with my business partner at the time. We worked with as many start-ups across as many industries as possible (often for free) and carved out a niche working with Hong Kong-based brands looking to grow their awareness in Australia.
While attending an Ernst & Young event, I met the founder of Luxury Escapes, Adam Schwab, who brought me on as one of the brand’s first marketing hires. I spent five years building our community to over two million, producing our Network Ten TV show and creating partnerships with the likes of Qantas and American Express. I loved my job, so when it was time for me to jump out of my comfort zone once more I was naturally fussy with the brand I wanted to drive.
Adore Beauty was top of that list. I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last 12 months as brand lead for our private label brands, including the launch of our cosmeceutical skincare line Viviology. I’ve now taken on the Head of Brand role. It will see me continue to look at brand strategy for our growing private label portfolio but also now drive the 22-years-young master brand that is Adore.
What challenges/hurdles have you faced getting to where you are now? Can you tell us about one in particular?
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One of the biggest challenges I think many young women in leadership positions face is backing themselves and their ideas. I was incredibly lucky to have both strong female mentors who built my confidence and great managers who backed me.
One of the biggest lessons I had to learn the hard way was understanding that being a ‘yes man’ in a function department (like marketing) can often put you in a position of making everyone else’s visions come to life. [It] doesn’t necessarily drive your career or put you into a leadership position. You have to be very purposeful about your time and when to say no to prioritise more big thinking.
What do you want people to know about your industry/your role? What’s the best part about your role?
I love that marketing is so broad. It’s a perfect mix of art, science, creativity and data, [plus] a whole lot of psychology. I was most drawn to the beauty industry because of how drastically it’s moving into a more positive space. For years, beauty marketing was built on preying on people’s insecurities – showing the picture-perfect image of conventional beauty.
With all of the negativity came the rise of social media and filters. I think we’re just at the tip of a new era driven by creators and community looking for real representations of beauty. Beauty is, at its heart, messy and individual. Consumers are no longer accepting this notion of conformity and instead embracing individuality. This excites me a lot.
What would surprise people about your role?
The variety of the day-to-day! In the morning, you might be working on a high-level brand strategy and by afternoon, you might be on the ground packing send-out boxes and running to the post office. There’s also a lot of financial and data literacy required.
Although my whole team knows I thrive in the creative space, to be a leader there are times you really need to back your ideas with numbers and data (just keep some intuitive magic).
What skills have served you well in your industry?
Confidence and communication. At the core of it, we are idea-sellers – both to our internal stakeholders and our potential customers. Having confidence in your communication is paramount. I was lucky enough to go to the school of ‘jack of all trades’ (i.e. entrepreneurship). In marketing, that flexibility has been such a bonus.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be in a role like yours one day?
Back your ideas with confidence. You’re not always going to have the perfect forecasting or data to back your ideas, so it does rely on you to confidently sell them to the wider business.
Don’t get too stuck in the mundane daily grind. Every marketing career starts with broad strokes but try to carve off time and space for finding your niche and pushing projects forward. It’s all about owning your priorities.
Hold on to the skills that aren’t part of your job description. No amount of remuneration can buy the people who show up to work as ambassadors for the brand with positive and contagious energy. Even on days when you feel out of your depth, this will carry you through as a valuable part of the team.
And lastly – if possible, work for a brand you love and would use yourself. Marketing is incredibly intuitive and you’ll build a lot of confidence in your role from simply being the target customer!
What about a practical tip?
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Get very very comfortable creating content yourself. The content beast has never been faster or more hungry, so it’s an invaluable skill to be able to create a piece of user-generated content (UGC) for your brand on the fly. There are more and more roles popping up focused solely on this – but it takes practice, so practice on yourself by creating a great content-driven personal brand.
Oh, and it pays to remember (and remind yourself often) that you’re no good at work if you’re not looking after yourself. Prioritise it.
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