Reese Witherspoon’s Latest Collaboration Aims To Capture The Millennial Imagination

Brands working with celebrities is nothing new. Brands using their platforms to tell a story has been done too. And while merging the two is just the natural progression—it's never been done quite the way that Elizabeth Arden and Reese Witherspoon are collaborating.

Tapped as the legendary beauty brand's “Storyteller-in-Chief," Reese isn't just sharing the inspirational story of Elizabeth Arden's impact to a new generation. She's also weaving it together with her own narrative and backstory.

Being that Elizabeth Arden is a brand that's over 100 years old and was likely loved and respected by your grandmother, this is new territory as they attempt to reach out to a younger yet equally empowered generation of women. Just like Elizabeth Arden never followed the rules, this campaign isn't being launched by checking off the boxes of what should be done or what's expected. Instead, ICED Media, the agency behind it all is breathing fresh life into the traditional marketing campaign.

Sitting down with ICED Media's president, Leslie Hall, we went deep into how this campaign was conceived and the new approach they're taking to truly stand out in the crowded market of inspiring and empowering women.

And, be sure to check out Reese's storyteller-in-chief here.

Thinking about the different women we used—like Chelsea Handler and Iris Apfel—they weren't A-list Hollywood Oscar winning celebrities on the red carpet every other week. But, they were women who were a bit provocative, and known for speaking their mind even when they didn't have an opinion that was popular.

They were women who weren't necessarily widely lauded by everyone. They weren't the easy choice. They weren't the safe choice, but they were women that really embodied that spirit of being champions of other women, carving their own path, and not doing the formulaic approach to fame and yet still became a household name. I think that allowed us to move forward in an authentic way that was true to the brand.

I give the Elizabeth Arden brand and I give Reese and her team a lot of credit. It's rare that someone at her level of celebrity is willing to be positioned as multi-faceted, and willing to be more than just the face of a brand. And, is willing to even explore the parallels of themselves in context to an iconic business person, or an iconic entrepreneur—as opposed to just being recognized in one area for one craft for which their celebrity was built. When you look at a lot of brands that work with celebrities of a certain caliber, it often feels like the brand is making the celebrity more famous, or the brand is leveraging its advertising reach to put the celebrity on a pedestal. I think when you look at this content and you look at this campaign, it's Reese using her celebrity to tell Elizabeth Arden's story, and to make the legacy of this iconic entrepreneur known to a new generation of women. It's Reese giving a history lesson to a new generation. You don't see that a lot. It's one of the things that I'm most proud of, because it gives the brand an opportunity to reinforce not only what they stand for, but also reinforce the brand values that they were founded on. It's a happy coincidence that many of those brand values happen to be so timely in today's conversations, newsfeeds, and political climate.

The movement is about inspiring a new generation of women. We're in a climate today where you see things like this manifesto from this person at Google where he talks about how biologically, women shouldn't be in leadership roles because biologically women aren't capable of being leaders and things of that nature. Our movement is about inspiring a new generation of women to have a more robust breadth of role models. Taking a woman like Elizabeth Arden, who at the turn of the century, not only created much of what the modern-day beauty industry is, but also marched with the Suffragettes and made lipstick colors that matched uniforms during World War II. It's the idea that a woman can be a role model in many different areas. She can be business-minded, but she can also align with causes that are important to her and make real change, and be a champion of other women.

She's someone who's known for bringing women's stories to the forefront. That's something that she's used her fame and celebrity in Hollywood to do. As a brand, we believe women's stories are really important. The first story we've partnered with Reese to tell is the story of Elizabeth Arden. As we do that, we'll look at some of the parallels between Reese's career and Elizabeth Arden's career. Then, we'll make sure that we're going to continue using this platform to bring more of these untold stories to the forefront ... and inspire women so that more stories can be told.

And, Reese is a champion of women. She's spoken out about pay equality in Hollywood. She's been very choosy with the causes that are important to her as well. I think it's not necessarily a movement that's about being prescriptive in terms of 'let's tell women here's our particular call to action, and here's what we want them to do.' I think it's more about 'here are women who are extraordinary, but often, those are not the stories being told. Those are not the stories that are being brought to the forefront in popular culture, film, advertising, and brand narratives.' We want to be a force for making those stories known. We want to bring those stories to the forefront. That's where really where storyteller-in-chief came in. It wasn't 'let's use Reese as an ambassador.' Let's not use her as just the face of the brand—but let's use her as the storyteller in chief.

I think we're very much in this era of a lot of marketers living in a 'check the box' campaign world. I think they feel that every campaign must have this 'here's how the user tells their story' component or 'here's how the user creates their own content.' It's really is about creating a movement where the visual cues that are created with the brand content are so subtly nuanced that over time, the consumer is trained to mirror that back to the brand. I think when you look at this our program, especially with Reese and with a storyteller-in-chief, this moment doesn't need to be a 'tell us your story right now.' That's not the point of this. Elizabeth Arden hasn't earned that yet. This is a brand, that when we started working with them, wasn't on the radar for this consumer at all; like not even Gen X. This is a brand that was largely speaking to a woman probably in her upper 40s or 50s.

For the first time, Elizabeth Arden is starting to speak to a new generation of women. It's probably not realistic that those women will start telling their stories to Elizabeth Arden. I think when you look at the evolution of the brand, and you look at the full consumer journey, we're in what I'll call the awareness stage of that journey and that evolution. I think to jump from, 'Here's an opportunity for the brand to introduce Reese, educate women on the story of who this iconic entrepreneur was' and then immediately say, 'Now tell us your story,' is just not realistic and not consistent with what a brand should expect to get from a consumer. The point of the campaign at this moment is really to create this universe of the brand, let the consumer know what the brand stands for, and then over time, really let them in to understand; and then create a universe of content that the consumer can start to mirror back.

It's not to say that down the line, there wouldn't be more pronounced calls to action, but I'm very much a believer that a brand first needs to earn that from the consumer.