Estee Lauder, domain dependence, & moats

You can be the best product for small market, build a real company, and then from a position of strength, either stay there or attempt to expand to adjacent markets. Or be undistictive in a huge market, out-advertised and invisible, never getting off the ground.

The fact is, star brands take time to grow. Take some of the small makeup companies we have acquired recently, like Bliss and Urban Decay. When we bought them, they were little start-ups run by their founders—very simple businesses, but with a lot of originality in the products. So now we know we must nurture them until they have some history. But

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Up until then, every cosmetic ad was designed to sell a product. I decided that rather than selling only a product, our ads would sell the brand. The brand would be timeless and would translate across languages and countries. All our advertising would be oriented toward the brand. Focusing on the brand would hone our identity and be our North Star:

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