Building the New Beauty Cult Exploring the Rhetorical Processes of Identification on the Example of the Beauty Brand Glossier

The beauty industry has gone through a significant change during the past decade. Women have started to challenge the pre-defined ideas of beauty imposed onto them by society and beauty companies. Social media abruptly transformed how beauty brands can communicate with their audience and decreased their control over the conversation. On top of that, millennials with their new approach toward lifestyle and consumption became a very relevant generation to which the brands needed to adjust. Thus, the current situation now more than ever calls for a better understanding of the effective ways to use the digital communication channels, that can be still fully controlled by the brands – owned media. This thesis aimed to expand the understanding of the effective usage of the owned social media by exploring the active role of the companies in the identification process between brands and customers. This was explored through the research question of what the rhetorical processes of identification behind the beauty brand Glossier are. By observing the customer brand identification theory through two concepts – identification theory of Burke and de Chernatony’s brand identity model – an active role of the brand in the customer brand identification process was considered and explored. A qualitative analysis combining the rhetorical and visual discourse analysis tool explored the rhetorical processes of identification on an example of 151 Instagram posts from the successful beauty brand Glossier. The analysis revealed, that one of the reasons for Glossier’s success can be the complex network of associations specifically made to attract millennials. These connections are based on the simpler associations supporting the mechanical identification, unusual associations enhancing the analogical identification along with the specific framing of the social ideas embracing the ideological identification. The brand is trying to avoid causing negative feelings in its consumers, which was a traditional marketing strategy of the beauty brands for a long time, and instead of that focuses on arousing positive feelings. The digital culture plays a crucial role in the customer brand identification process. It supports the feeling of belonging to the brand community while it enhances customer brand identification through the co-creation. Also, the framing of social ideas about inclusiveness and the promotion of the natural non-transformational looks could lead to the dissociation. In conclusion, this thesis found that if brands want to actively support the identification process and build a new beauty cult, they should communicate simple, unusual, and social ideas attractive for their audience while showing brand identity through the customers’ content.