Beekman 1802 has just kicked off a year-long campaign championing nurses, called “Nurses First.”
“[Beekman is] a brand built on two pillars, goat milk and kindness. [So we’re] celebrating those who put kindness out into the world,” said CEO Jill Scalamandre. The program is extensive, which is fitting considering it will play out over the entire year.
Any nurse providing their nurse ID number will be able to shop Beekman’s site with a 20% off discount. The first 3,000 nurses to sign up via the site, from January 6, will receive the brand’s latest launch, its Milk Scrub. Beekman will host monthly events and giveaways for nurses, such as front-row seats to Broadway shows and first-class flight tickets. In May, the brand will launch a product designed for and co-created with nurses. Finally, the brand will fund “kindness grants” for nurses. For example, via Beekman’s website, someone could nominate a nurse’s departmen for a free lunch and, if the nurse is chosen, the brand will foot the bill. Beekman’s “chief kindness officer,” Alan Edstrom, will hand-select two to three winners each month, said Brad Farrell, Beekman’s CMO. According to the brand, Edstrom evaluates and personally vets each nomination and grants funds based on its impact and the number of people it will help.
“I was raised by a single mother who was a full-time nurse. When I started my medical career and worked with medical-care teams, it gave me a unique view into the essential role that nurses play in ensuring health and wellness outcomes, as well as the emotional and physical toll the job can take on them. … Our team wanted to show our genuine appreciation for the devoted and inherently kind nurses in our neighborhood and beyond,” said Dr. Brent Ridge, co-founder of Beekman 1802.
Of course, the campaign also has a social element. Beekman tapped four nurses with impressive followings to create content — each has a contract for at least the first half of 2023. Carolyn Clark (207,000 followers) was the first to post, on January 12. She created a get-ready-with-me video (posted on both TikTok and Instagram) in which she used Beekman products and told her followers about the Nurses First initiative.
The brand is also working with Miki Rae (2.4 million TikTok followers), Anna Held (527,000 TikTok followers) and Kennedy Powers (670,000 TikTok followers). The nurses were not quick to sign on to a brand partnership, Farrell said, noting that, in contrast, “For beauty influencers, you just write a check, and they’ll post something for you the next day.”
“[With nurses] there is that trust and credibility factor that they themselves embody, and they know their community expects that. Our hypothesis is that, by working with these people who truly love the brand — some were using the products already, others fell in love with our products — it’s going to have a bigger impact than working beauty influencers who are talking about a different product every day.”
Interestingly, before investing efforts and money in the campaign, Beekman examined its social following and customer base and found that nurses already made up a significant slice — it was the most common profession amongst Beekman’s followers on Instagram, where the brand has 124,000 followers.
When asked why this might be, members of the Beekman team offered up a variety of possible reasons. Scalamandre surmised that nurses relate to the brand’s mission of kindness, given that “nurses are kind people to do what they do everyday.”
“The products [themselves are] key. Nurses look for products that have clinical validation — [that] have the proof and the science behind [them]. And [many who have] patients with psoriasis and eczema have seen that, when people use our products, it changes their skin. They’re clean, they’re nontoxic, and our skin care is fragrance-free,” Farrell said.
The campaign’s primary goal is awareness and community building, Scalamandre said. “[Our success] will be measured by how many nurses we join in, and how many people share and engage.”
