Social Sessions #004: Trial-and-Error
Gerard Scarpaci and Randy Taylor have a long history in the business as educators, stylists, salon owners, and community-builders. With their network, they were among the first in the industry to think about using digital media as a way to connect people, and in 2008, by applying the principles of what they were doing in the classroom to online, created Hairbrained, which has become the home of craft hairdressers online, boasting 27,000 community members using the Hb app, 120,000 followers on Facebook, 210,000 on Instagram and 35,000 on Twitter. This is the first of our three part interview with them spanning community, trial and error, and the future of social in the beauty industry.
Idealogue x Hairbrained: Part 2
Randy: One of the things that struck me the most after hitting that point was how people started ‘picking’ themselves. Once we removed the barriers to sharing work and communication, people started to rising to the top based on merit, not simply connections. It really is incredible how fast some of these kids are meeting and even surpassing us in terms of their cachet in the industry. It’s something that often rubs people the wrong way. That whole idea of getting peeved that while we had to work year after year to get where we are, these kids are moving fast and don’t “deserve” the popularity they’re getting. Hairbrained was the first part of that movement and I’m proud of how it’s shaken things up.
Gerard: Hairbrained is a conversation, not a one-way street. But after that milestone, we realized that we had an opportunity to start curating that content to reach more people who might be interested in learning from it, too. And that’s where the Facebook page came in. While the community itself was on its own site with a login, once Facebook opened up to everyone, people were there – and so we decided we’d take the best of what we were seeing in our community, and curate it for Facebook. We’ve got something like 120,000 page followers now? Then Instagram became an extension that was ideally suited for images. We basically set the precedent and the template for curating work submitted socially.
We didn’t have plans for any kind of promotional marketing, either. But that was about the time that we met people like Reuben Carranza, Cory Couts, who would ask us, are you guys accepting media promotion? We were like, well – we haven’t thought about it, but people do spend a lot of money going to all these events and shows, so we built a sponsorship model that we considered almost like public television for hairdressers. We weren’t the media, and frankly, didn’t want to be, but if you were supporting valuable content, we’d love to have you. For us, old marketing is dead. Supporting value, creating value for hairdressers, that’s what it’s all about. By about 2011, we had 8 or 9 sponsors, and then we launched eCommerce at around the same time. The tools are a big passion for us – we love the tools, share the tools, and when you’re doing classes, people are always asking things like, ‘what’s that comb, why is it better?’ We wanted to make our favorites available. It’s a labor of love.
Randy: There was this mantra about making it all about them. We just looked at everything, and whenever a new decision would come up, we’d ask ourselves, how do we make it about our members? It goes back to what Gerard was saying about empathy.
LBP: How do you know what’s right for the community?
Gerard: Well, as hairdressers it’s easy. We’ve got enough experience to know what people like — between the two of us, we have 50 years experience in the industry. My wife, kelly @hairbrainedko is a hairdresser too, who works with us. Hairdressers are visual, so we ask ourselves, what’s visual that can we show people? And we test, test again, learn from our mistakes. We did things we thought were incredible and they failed. Remember the backstage project?
Randy: Oh yeah — we thought people would be thrilled to have a bird’s eye view of the best hairdressing in the world, backstage at runway shows. So we set up several Periscope broadcasts of masters like Tim Hartley, Eugene Souleiman, Sharon Blain and others at work backstage or during a presentation, and it flopped. Why? Because people couldn’t ask questions. You’re watching probably some of the most thrilling work in the industry, but Eugene’s job is to do hair. He can’t stop and explain anything to you, because he’s got to get the models out there. So it didn’t work. People just wanted to talk about what he was doing and connect with the artists.
Now, we’ve fixed that with our Hb Live broadcasts on Facebook videos – they are set up specially for the online audience, and meant to address them only, it’s not a secondary thing because we know that people like to ask questions. We’ve had maybe like over 15 live broadcasts so far and probably somewhere around 1M views?
Randy: There’s a-ha moments every day, too.
Gerard: Have you seen what we’re doing with polling? It’s great. We’re able to get a wider swath of information about topics that impact our industry in hours. Advice every day. For instance, everyone’s up in arms. Instagram stories! What’s that all about? Will everyone leave Snapchat? We just put up a poll yesterday about this. One second, let me check.
Randy: 80% love it.
Gerard: 80% think they’ll use Instagram stories. Overnight and now we know. It’s 75 votes today, so not quite valid, but that’s what you get overnight with a big enough community. You get to see what people do, and understand how everyone thinks.
Follow Randy and Gerard on Instagram at @randytaylorfoto, @gerardscarpaci, and @hairbrained_official. Join the Hairbrained network by going to hairbrained.me, and get live tutorials from both of them on the Hairbrained Facebook page. To hear from Randy and Gerard live along with other exciting movers-and-shakers in the industry, get a ticket for LBP Idealogue: The Social Media Sessions, focusing on how social media is changing our industry, happening October 21-22 in NYC. Get one here.
