Sephora: Crisis Communication

Sephora is a global company that includes more than 1300 stores in 27 countries. With all of these stores, it’s obvious that Sephora dominates the beauty market, so having an effective crisis communications strategy for its employees, investors, government bodies and various communities is of utmost importance.

Thousands of employees across the globe work for Sephora whether it is at their headquarters in San Francisco or one of their retail stores. By keeping their employees happy and well informed, their internal communication remains strong. Sephora uses a typical corporate structure with benefits for their employees such as retirement and 401k. Since Sephora is a privately held company owned by the French company LVMH (Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessey), they do not have investors or such information for the public to view. After reading many employee reviews about working for Sephora, almost all reviews are positive. Overall, management keeps employees well informed on all company aspects and provides detailed training programs. Management and peers teach others from experience, and employees are compensated much higher than other retail stores.

Sephora appeals to a wide demographic of women, men, and teens of all ages, but they generally target their main market segment of women ages 20-30 and 30-40. By selling quality products, having exceptional customer service in stores and online, they stand apart from the crowd in the beauty market. The Sephora experience brings their customer back time and time again, just with service alone. Aside from their in store and online presence, they reach out to surrounding communities and demonstrate a strong corporate social responsibility. GoodGuide ratings have noted Sephora as being 34% more socially responsible than its competitors, rating them a 6.7 scientific rating, 7.4 core company environmental performance, and a 6 for social performance. These ratings are above average and in the green zone, representing their high corporate social responsibility.

Sephora does not currently have an employee or celebrity spokesperson for their company. Since Sephora carries over 250 different beauty brands, most of their advertisements are incorporated with other brands and their spokesperson. For example, all around their fragrance department, they have signage for all the latest fragrances such as Lady Gaga’s new scent, Fame. Displays like this is what differentiates other brands from one another, but the Sephora brand is represented by all the other brands as a whole. I do not believe having a spokesperson would help their business revenue, but having an identifiable model like Chanel Iman or Karlie Kloss for their website for how-to videos might capture their audiences attention.

If Sephora was to undergo a company crisis, their strong communication skills would be the most important strategy to come into play. For example, if one of their products caused a rash on someone’s skin, they need to act fast before something like this was found out by the public and put them in a negative light. This is where important crisis communications and public relations skills are put to the test. Having a strong team of employees that are properly trained on how to react and handle customer complaints will help maintain their image. By properly training employees in the beginning with all proper procedures, employees will know how handle most situations, whether it is in the store or something larger.

When faced with a crisis, being able to communicate with both insiders and the public is the most important thing. Before certain information is released to the public, employees should be well informed on the issue at hand. Secondly, the company should then be open and honest to the public about how they will go about fixing the problem and what specific changes the public will be expected to see. As many details as possible given in the beginning will only help the public understand the situation, rather than find out hidden details at the end.