According to WWD, Clinique has this week appointed British actress, Emilia Clarke, as its first global brand ambassador, with Clinique having previously refrained from using celebrity ambassadors over its 50-year history.
In the past, Clinique has opted to instead let the products speak for themselves. However, brand president, Jane Lauder, recently noted in a meeting that “authority has been changing and people want authentic stories.”
“We didn’t go with a model, we went with somebody with a human personality,” Clinique senior vice president and global creative director, Elizabeth Nolan, said. “She’s got such a human, emotional, real authenticity to her. She’s funny, she’s honest, she hasn’t shied away from being herself. That sums up the Clinique consumer as well.”
According to Lauder, what solidified the partnership however was the fact that Clarke was first introduced to Clinique by her mother when she was a teenager. This was important to the brand, as it wanted a longtime user as a global representative.
“The brand feels fresh and relatable and universal, and those are the traits I believe in,” Clarke said. “They’re not trying to make people look different, they’re trying to make people look like themselves, which is ideal because we can’t keep striving to be something we’re not anymore. That’s an absolute recipe for lifelong misery.”
Clarke will be representing Clinique’s custom-fit hydrating system, Clinique iD, the brand’s personalised skincare range. This system allows users to tailor their moisturiser to specific skin concerns by selecting from a base and active cartridge concentrate. When it launched two years ago, it was said to be Clinique’s biggest launch since Even Better Clinical.
