Welcome to an audio-led update from Unmade. Today we hear a fly-on-the-wall interview with marketing strategist Mat Baxter in which he unloads on premium brands seeking cheap media, and lays out the marketing strategy for his new luxury tattoo skincare brand.
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Baxter the iconoclast
Hal Crawford writes:
Mat Baxter has launched a luxury tattoo skincare brand. After spending a career in agencies persuading others to do things, the brakes are off and “it’s time to put up or shut up.”
“We are going to be the client that I always wanted. I wanted a client that didn’t want to go to pitch … I wanted a client who cut us in on the success we contributed to without caps or exception … and I wanted a client who, when I was in a meeting and gave a recommendation, they actually took that recommendation.”
Baxter says that the Skingraphica brand he is launching (on October 1) is a new category. I spoke with him — for the news story I wrote in Mumbrella — right after his morning gym workout, and he was pumped. The words and numbers flow: tattoos globally are a $6 billion industry, a billion people around the world and one in four Australians sport a tattoo.
Baxter discovered there are no scientifically formulated high-end products aimed at the market while he was preparing to receive his first tattoo in the Sydney studio of Swedish maestro Mikael Rämgård. The interesting thing about the venture is Baxter’s marketing strategy: 100% out-of-home in terms of brand spend, with a healthy whack of influencer in the form of the world’s top tattoo artists.
“We recognize we have to engage with the best artists in the world … [of the world’s top 10 artists] we're working directly with two of them, and we know the balance.”
“There will be no performance marketing … no low-end buys at all. Build a great brand, have great products. Customers will come and find you and buy you. We're not interested in cheap. We want quality.
“Above the line, we're going a 100 percent out-of-home. Out-of-home is the last superpower brand channel, in my view, outside of digital.”
Baxter, who led strategy for IPG Mediabrands in New York before becoming CEO of Initiative and then Huge, is caustic about the influence of finance on marketing.
“ I purposely kept the company private because in my experience, bankers fuck brands. I'm not prepared at this point trying — as a frustrated marketer for years, not being client side, being agency side — I'm not prepared to make brand compromises because of money at this stage.
“I want the brand to be looked after and executed and launched in the most pure and uncompromised form possible.”
More from Mumbrella…
Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. Tim will be back with Best of the Week iun the morning.
Have a great day
Hal Crawford
Editorial Director, Mumbrella
hcrawford@mumbrella.com.au
