Heir apparent: Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, the fresh face of faces

Posted Mar 22nd 2008 5:10PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Management, Marketing and Advertising, Estee Lauder (EL), Entrepreneurs

This post is one of several on business heirs apparent. Let us know in the comments whether you think Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer should take up the reigns of Estee Lauder, and be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

A cosmetics empire might seem the ultimate in puffery, the very materialization of vanity. But the venerable empire built by Estee Lauder and her powerhouse son, Leonard, has turned makeup into a very real financial juggernaut. And Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Leonard's niece, is not only the public face of the company but also the considerable creative brain of its marketing soul.

As granddaughter of the company's founder, Aerin is surely far-removed from the hardscrabble life that was The Estee Lauder Companies Inc (NYSE: EL) beginnings. She is a child of great wealth and, as such, is the inheritor not just of money and corporate responsibility but also of appearances. Aerin is not just the face of the company, but of a certain sense of style; her choices, from her cutlery to the clothing her two boys wear to (of course) her lip gloss, are signals to a certain subset of the fashion world. Aerin is not just the harbinger of styles, she is a style.

Can one go from being the face of a company to its head? If anyone is positioned to do so, it's Aerin. She didn't just grow up in the center of the fashion world, but in the center of the "old American money" world; her best friends are Lauren duPont and Renee Rockefeller, and they've been teaching her the ways of the powerful since she was a child.

And as head of Global Advertising for Estee Lauder, Aerin has demonstrated a knack for creating a unified brand image, as well as controlling the details and delivering the corp-speak when required. Her public sound bites always come off perfectly, much like her society photographs, always with perfect skin and a glowing smile.

While perfect skin may not be a resume requirement for most corporations, for Estee Lauder, nothing could be more important. Having publicly stated that she, like her grandmother, doesn't believe in research or focus groups, Aerin must be the customer (or, more to the point, be the person the customer wants to be). So maybe her relative youth is an asset? It's certainly the message the Estee Lauder corporate communication folk seem to be delivering. And the media seems to be licking it up like a child wearing a thick application of fruit-flavored lip gloss.

Also be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

Tags: Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Estee Lauder, heir apparent, Leonard Lauder

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-30-2008 @ 2:45AM

kim said...

Estee Lauder runs the show in cosmetics. They own about 80% of the retail market where I live. So while they have done great things in the past, I'd like to see some new ideas pumped into the main company so that they can keep up with their sister company Clinique. So my vote is ... bring on Aerin (what a cool spelling for her name).

http://www.getyourbonusnow.com/cosmetics/