WW 08: Of the nation

Nash Mariah on building a brand whose mission isn't simply skin-deep

Hello & welcome to the next edition of Wellwatching, an exploration of the evolving business and culture of wellness by me, Alex Grieves. If you’re new, have a read through previous interviews here. 

I’m thrilled that I got to reconnect with an old South African friend, Nash Mariah, for this week’s edition. Nash is a Cape Town-based marketing consultant and the co-founder and CMO of Lelive, a unisex start-up skincare brand made by and for South Africans. 

We met while working together at Ogilvy Cape Town, where Nash spent four years specialising in PR and social media. He then worked at e-commerce platform Superbalist and furniture & homeware brand Weylandts where he ran their marketing department.

In our conversation, we talked about building a local, community-led brand, listening as the biggest competitive advantage, and why ‘wellness’ doesn’t translate in a South African context. Have a read below.

Tell me a bit about yourself: what do you do?

I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of Lelive (luh-lee-vay), a new South African born and bred skincare brand that launched in April 2020. Beyond branding and marketing, I’m also involved in product development.  

How did Lelive come about?

Lelive was born at the peak of lockdown in South Africa, when none of us could leave the house. Beforehand, the team had had various conversations about starting a community-driven brand that focused on skincare and wellness. Lockdown felt like the perfect time to speak to people meaningfully about taking care of themselves, so we jumped on the opportunity.

What does Lelive mean?

The name is inspired by our founder and CEO, actress/model/host Amanda du-Pont’s unofficial Swazi name, which means 'of the nation or world.’ We loved it immediately, as it represents being proudly South African, environmental consciousness, and giving back to our community. As South Africans, we’re best-placed to create an inclusive brand that accommodates the many different types of people – and skin – in our country.

When it comes to skincare, we’re spoiled for choice. What gap does Lelive aim to fill in the market?

Locally, we felt we were missing great-quality products that weren’t out of reach for the majority of the South African population. We can find all of the typical American, European and Korean imports here, but they’re expensive. We wanted to create skincare that was fantastic and effective, made with ingredients that we could stand by, at a price point that more of us can afford. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Internationally, we weren’t seeing brands that were truly homegrown African and stood proudly next to their foreign counterparts. This is our opportunity to create a brand and products in the image of our community at home, with ingredients that are native to our country, that proudly occupies space on a global stage. We want to be the brand from home that South Africans will see all over the world.

Who is Lelive for? And how have you cultivated a community with them?

We’ve been clear from the beginning that we want Lelive to be for as many people as possible. But as someone who comes from an ad agency background, I wanted to avoid developing what I experienced as narrowly-defined consumer pen portraits that don’t capture the diverse nuances of a community. I wanted to hold space for a diverse, multifaceted audience.

Broadly speaking, three main different types of people have surfaced in our community research: skincare experts, who have researched extensively and really know their stuff; aesthetes, who frankly care just as much about product look and feel as they do performance; and then a sizeable group of people who are struggling to find something that works for them and don’t have the disposable income to, say, see a dermatologist. The assumption is that our audience is likely Millennials, but our age range is actually quite broad. We also consciously rejected the false gender binary that mainstream beauty and skincare brands often perpetuate, and want Lelive to feel relevant no matter how someone identifies.

Amanda has been brilliant at helping to identify and nurture our community. She is a South African actress, with a few million followers on social media who absolutely love her for her focus on conscious living and eco-friendliness. With established credibility, she’s been able to bring people along on the Lelive journey.

Social has proven to be the best place where we can have an ongoing, productive and informal  conversation with our audience about their needs and challenges. When lockdown hit and Lelive had just launched, we started by sharing information on various self-care topics that we thought would resonate, while also asking our audience what they were missing from the wellness industry and how a new skincare brand could potentially help. Recently, we’ve also developed a small ambassador group, who we chat to on WhatsApp about new product development.

What is your community looking for?

I think it’s first worth saying that people’s expectations of skincare have massively increased thanks to social media, in particular YouTube tutorials. Video content has turned thousands of ordinary people into skincare experts, who care deeply about finding the right blend of science-backed performance, sustainability and natural ingredients.

They wanted us to ensure that the approach we created to be simple and easy-to-understand – they’re tired of 18-step routines and confusing product names. This is why we only have seven core products – and if we do add any in the future, they will be strictly vetted in terms of how they deliver against otherwise unmet needs of our audience.

They were also clear on the concerns to target. As we're operating in South Africa, the majority of our customers are Black, and are looking for solutions for dark spots and pigmentation as well as breakouts and dehydration.

These conversations inspired our range of seven products that blend traditional, local African ingredients that people have used for centuries – such as marula oil, turmeric and aloe – with modern performance ingredients like hyaluronic acid or vitamin C, to address South Africans’ main skin concerns. I think we’ve quickly built trust by demonstrating that our mission to be ‘of the nation’ will always be what guides our products and our approach to a skincare ritual.

How do you think people’s understanding of wellness has changed over the past few years?

Zooming out from important issues that are often discussed individually – sustainability, positive impact, and so on – I think that people increasingly expect brands to genuinely listen to their audience and meaningfully act on what they care about. At this point people are so much more educated about climate change, good and bad ingredients, genuine sustainability and more, that they know what to look for in the brands that they choose. It’s simply not enough to hope that a top-down, ‘brand knows best’ approach will work any longer.

This is really apparent in South Africans’ perception of  ‘wellness.’ The term has a negative connotation here, in large part I think because it points to an imported definition from the West. It’s unsurprisingly associated with a lot of privilege, and so framing it in the American context (yoga, green juice, supplements) is completely irrelevant to your average South African. For South Africans, ‘wellness’ is simply taking care of oneself. It’s about simple, pragmatic actions that are natural and intuitive, that don’t require any repackaging or extra costs. And so, a brand talking about wellness in this way risks alienating the majority of the country.

For us, having a community to tell us from the start what they wanted was invaluable – and also confirmed that we as a team were on the same page as our audience. We were also frustrated that brands weren't paying close enough attention to their ingredients, or packaging, or positive impact. Our approach has proven how important it is to keep listening closely and having our community’s best interests at heart.

How do you think wellness in the beauty category might evolve in the next five years?

I think, and hope, that the category starts treating wellness as a 360-degree endeavour. Skincare, like anything else in the broader wellness industry, isn’t a magic bullet or an instant solution. So I think it’s important to communicate realistically about where it sits in people’s lives, and how it can help as part of a wider wellness ecosystem. But beyond product, we have to think more about the ecosystems in which we operate. What really happens to our packaging when someone has used up a cream? Where and how are we harvesting our ingredients? What about the workers who manufacture our product? These aren’t new conversations, but I think that this definition of wellness in relation to an ecosystem is becoming more mainstream, and will have a greater impact on the way brands are perceived.

What is a personal wellbeing breakthrough that you’ve had over the past year?

Lockdown offered me an opportunity to confront my anxiety, which I realised had long been exacerbated by my drinking. Becoming more conscious of how drinking affects me has been a huge breakthrough – I gave it up completely for nearly a year. At first it felt amazing; I was on an initial wave of feeling physically great. But after a while, I realized that I still had to deal with my underlying issues that drinking had masked. It was a bit of a roller coaster, but I’ve come out of it feeling better overall.

What does wellbeing mean to you?

For me, it's about being conscious and accepting of every decision that you make. Life doesn't have to be all or nothing. What’s most important is that you feel good in that moment. Being rigid actually means being fragile; it’s easy for everything to break. Conscious balance is what I strive for.

What is the next challenge that you'd like to take on?

The past 10 years of my career to date – in agencies, in-house, and now in a start-up – have been so interesting and fulfilling. I’ve built a career and a life that I’m really proud of, but it did take a few years of navigating corporate culture and trying to find my own way of existing in it. As a next step, I’d love to help other people navigate a creative career in a way that feels true to their nature.