On January 14, Brooke Shields will publish her third book, “Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old.” And on January 8, her seven-month-old hair-care brand, Commence, will debut its first brand campaign, with paid media behind it on Meta and Google.
The campaign aims to showcase the brand’s “playful, confident and fearless” customer, who is age 40-plus, in a way that other brands aren’t, said Shields. She noted that under 1% of all ads feature women 60 and older, even though one out of six people is over 65. “Our goal is to celebrate our brand values — aging gracefully and fearlessly, with joy and authenticity — in an approachable and creative format. [And we want] our community to feel represented in every visual they see from us.”
Commence launched in June 2024 with three SKUs and has since rolled out an additional three, all of which have been guided by consumer demand. It is an offshoot of an online community Shields previously founded, which had been called Beginning Is Now and had over 100,000 followers. Beginning Is Now’s Instagram account has since become Commence’s account and has 117,000 followers. In the last eight weeks, Commence saw a sales lift of 50%, Shields shared with Glossy.
“We got to know our community really well, and what kept coming up were specific needs. … We realized there was a huge white space. [No brands were addressing] the biological challenges women are facing and addressing them from a beauty standpoint and from a progressive way of looking at things, rather than through this negative narrative that we’re sold that [aging] is the beginning of the end.” Hair changes are often at the forefront of [older women’s] insecurities, she said.
Shields said she was careful when transforming her online community into a brand with something to sell. “Once you start monetizing a community, you have to be really sensitive to the emotional aspect of it,” she said. “It was never our intention to profit off of [members].”
In initial Commence marketing, “the community we’ve worked so hard to build wasn’t depicted as well as they could have been,” Shields said. “We’re learning as we go and listening to the feedback shared by our community members who have been here since the beginning and our newer community members.”
The new campaign is intended to make the community feel seen and represented “through quippy phrases and stunning visuals,” she said.
One campaign image features Shields alongside the text, “I can take a compliment.” According to Shields, the idea was to convey “the confidence and genuine joy that women exude over 40.”
“If brands are marketing to this age group, which rarely happens, they certainly aren’t messaging or showcasing the playful nature that still exists at this age,” she said. “We wanted to bring this to the forefront.”
The campaign also introduces a new tagline for the brand: “Take care.”
“We’ve always been a brand rooted in care — starting with hair care, as that was the first ask from our community,” Shields said.
The campaign is intended to engage the brand’s core community while using paid social to expand the brand’s reach, Shields said. Commence will track both qualitative and quantitative results, with a focus on organic community feedback, traffic to its website and social channels, and the number of new visitors to its site.
Finally, given its proximity to Shields’s book launch, her book events will incorporate the brand with handouts of “Brookemarks” featuring an exclusive offer for attendees to receive 15% off Commence for a limited time. “I’m incredibly proud of the research behind my book and how it naturally ties into our mission here at Commence,” Shields said.
