Influencer
Fiona Frills, CEO of Frilliance, on the Power of Gen Z and Influencer Marketing
Many teens struggle with breakouts. Fiona Frills, CEO of Frilliance, certainly did and this led her to create Frilliance, a clean cosmetics and skincare company offering products designed to treat common teen skin concerns. Today, Fiona shares her thoughts on the power of Gen Z, influencer marketing, and how she launched Frilliance at just 13 years old.
Fiona Frills started Frilliance, a clean cosmetics and skincare company offering products that fight acne and nurture teen skin, at the age of 13.
Fiona shares that she’s always loved makeup, even at the young age of eight or nine when she would borrow and play with her aunt’s makeup.
As a young teen, she started having a lot of breakouts, rashes, and even tiny bumps on her skin, leading her to research the ingredients in her current skincare and makeup regime.
She explains, “I took a step back, and I stopped wearing makeup. I was like, “Okay, you know, maybe this will help my skin clear up. That this is insane. It has to be the makeup products I’m using, so I started researching the ingredients in the products I was using, and I was baffled.”
She shares that the ingredients in the products were baffling to her, which led her to create Frilliance from the money she made from her acting and YouTube career.
The name, Frilliance, comes from her YouTube channel name “Fiona Frills” and the word “brilliant,” which keeps the brand name positive and easy to understand.
The Beginning of Frilliance
Fiona shares that there were many challenges to starting her company, including finding trustworthy people to be by her side.
“I feel like the biggest struggle is realizing that no matter what, you’re going to have to always overcome little things. They may be larger things, sometimes they may be really small, but it’s really important to research and also get smart, hardworking, trustworthy people on your team.”
Another struggle was getting others to take Frilliance seriously because it’s a teen-oriented skincare company, which can come with its own challenges.
“I think it’s important to always have a niche when it comes to a business. I think it definitely makes you different compared to other brands out there, and there’s so many beauty brands out there.”
Fiona shares that many people overlook the teen niche and don’t realize how hard being a teenager is and the self-confidence issues that often come with this period in your life.
“Our brand really helps teens with their skin, and we’re coming out with a few new programs to help them even more with their skin and their self-confidence and stuff like that. So, that I think is a huge reason why we have grown and also a huge thanks to social media.”
On social media, Fiona has built a loyal community that trusts her and her brand. Frilliance is carried at Walmart. Fiona shares that they are also looking at being carried in another drugstore as well.
Influencer Marketing
Frilliance utilizes influencer marketing, which Fiona has first-hand experience with being a creator. She personally gets involved and wants to make influencers feel that they are a person, not a robot.
“When we work with creators, I want it to be very much like you do not have to post this. You are not obligated to. You can completely decide what you want to do with and just really be hands-on with them because I think it’s super important to make them [creators] feel like a person because when brands have approached me, they make me feel like a robot.”
Currently, Frilliance is working on a pimple patch TikTok campaign through an agency. Frilliance has a list of ideas and prompts creators can use as inspiration for their original content for the campaign.
“We kind of give them [creators] ideas. We communicate with them. I’m always DMing them and making sure, “Hey, how do you like the products?”
She shares that the creator films the TikTok and does a voiceover, then Frilliance will send it to an editor to piece it together.
Recently, they’ve been focusing on a teen tips campaign that shares tips the creator wishes they knew as a teen, with one of the tips focusing on pimple patches.
“It’s a fun, easy TikTok to watch, and it’s cute. I think it’s really important to share information while also promoting your product because, at the end of the day, that is the goal with ads.”
The Power of Gen Z
Fiona shares that Gen Z has so much power regarding social media and making considerable changes in the world.
“Gen Z is overall very powerful because we care so much about inclusion and communication and caring and understanding, where I feel like a lot of other generations kind of have looked past it, and it’s been not as accessible.”
She adds that the prevalence of teenagers on social media gives Gen Z a lot of power, and brands are looking at this generation very seriously for sales and influence.
In the future, Fiona would love to see more diversity.
“We don’t see a lot of diversity when it comes to working with brands or stuff like that… I also think it’s very important to not use Photoshop and face filters and stuff like that. I think that is just detrimental to people’s mental health. There’s definitely a lot of things that I think people could improve on.”
For her, diversity would also look like brands showing different people, skin types, body types, and more.
Transparency is another key element that Fiona would love to see brands embrace more.
She has noticed that “a lot of brands will in a way lie about certain things like they’ll put things on their packaging that is just not true like they’ll say this is clean and it’s not.”
These misleading statements can lead to disappointment and confusion when consumers flip the packaging over and read the ingredients, which are often filled with unrecognizable, not clean ingredient names.
Future Plans
In the future, Fiona plans on continuing to expand Frilliance by bringing in more teens to work with the company.
“I really want to bring more teens actually in the company and kind of create a teen board.”
She would love to make a teen board with teens of all ages, especially since she is currently in her later teens and wants to always keep the focus on teens and their needs.
“We’re currently working on a consultation program where someone can book a free 20-minute consultation with me, and I can help them with their skin and guide them, so that’s something we’re launching very soon.”
Frilliance is also looking to expand its product line and be carried by more stores in the future.
