Social Sessions #005: Hb Future
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 3
Gerard: Well, to paraphrase one of the Idealogue speakers, Gary V, as long as we’re creating 51% of the value we’ll be relevant. Whenever people connect with Hairbrained, if they feel like they walk away with more value than is taken away, we’ll be fine. It’s all about sticking with our plan to create something valuable for our community. Association, not media. We don’t worry about competition at all – we’ve got enough good people on the site that we’re able to create revenue that in turn helps us create better content for them. Randy’s now full-time creating media. We’ve got a full-time content creative house with him.
Randy: Now we’re able to create something like 30 pieces of high-quality educational content in two months. The 60-90 minute tutorials we mentioned before on Facebook live are off-the-hook and weekly. Gerard’s also full-time Hairbrained as of May 1 too. We just had to, it’s gotten so large. Previously both of us had other jobs – there’s no way we’ll stop doing hair, but it was a long time coming.
The thing that will never be replaced by technology, even augmented reality, I believe, is hands-on. We’ll see the theory and pre-learning becoming more and more digital, while the student will then spend all their class time doing perfecting the craft with their hands.
LBP: What do you wish you could’ve done differently?
Gerard: Well, you know, I think we’ve always undervalued the things we can deliver for brands. And maybe that’s because we started this whole thing when people only wanted that two-page spread in magazines. You can’t make someone value something they don’t value, and at the time, we’d pitch marketing teams so persuasively, but they just didn’t get it. And that was tough. They’d spend their money on more trade magazines, and we’d be like – but no one can click on it! I don’t think it was until this year that people have started to see digital as a smart way to promote their brands. We were ahead of the game, because we had to be, and now the machine’s catching up.
LBP: As keepers of a social network yourself, do you think all the sharing allows for more creativity, or hinders it?
Gerard: Randy was the first person to say to me how worried he was about this culture. How it might be detrimental to the work. Our biggest fear was that people wouldn’t try new things and stop pushing the envelope to do things that they knew would get a lot of likes. And then everyone would start copying each other or whatever was getting the most likes, and unfortunately in an art and in a craft, what’s most popular is not really a sign of creativity or skill. When everybody starts creating work with the same goal, it had a tendency to get homogenized, and it was our goal that they could put photos up of what they like, what they’re doing, and what they care about instead of trying to please everyone else. That’s when the real magic happens – and we encourage that.
Randy: That’s the same story with Vidal Sassoon and his technique. At the time he launched his techniques in the early 60’s people said – that’s terrible, it’s disgusting, But because he believed in his work he went on to change the craft completely — he wouldn’t have changed the craft if he wondered how many likes he might get.
Gerard: When I see a photo i think is great, but I question if I should curate it, I look at the craft behind it. Craft over mass, every time.
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.
