Avon’s Mark Is on Facebook

Will click-click replace ding-dong? The world is changing and Avon is staying ahead of the curve. Avon’s Mark brand is headed to Facebook. The move is a testament to the changing habits of 40,000 to 50,000 Mark representatives, who range from 18 to 30 years old.

At a recent meeting with analysts, Avon — a more than $10 billion company — declared it planned to commit $50 million over the next several years to its social networking strategy, recalled Caris & Co. analyst Linda Bolton Weiser. While at the time the company was mum on details, Weiser said, “It certainly piqued the interest of a lot of investors.”

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Mark Astrachan said, “Avon doesn’t spend as much [as other beauty firms] from a marketing point of view,” adding the direct seller allocates about 4 percent of its revenue to advertising and marketing, which includes representative programs. “Avon needs to educate consumers a bit. Maybe Facebook is how you do it.”

The direct seller took its first stab at going viral in late August, when Mark introduced a free iPhone application on iTunes. The app makes direct selling more relevant to the twentysomething-year-old Mark representative. Rather than pull a wrinkled catalogue — or magalogue, as Mark calls it — from her bag, the rep can page through the brochure on her iPhone, said Annemarie Frank, Mark’s head of e-commerce and digital media.