Alba Makes An Honest Co. Man Out Of Clorox COO Vlahos

The Honest Company, the healthy lifestyle brand started by actress Jessica Alba and serial entrepreneur Brian Lee in 2011, named Nick Vlahos, Clorox EVP and COO, as its CEO yesterday. He succeeds Lee, who also co-founded LegalZoom and ShoeDazzle. He remains on the board and will advise the company.

“Nick shares our mission of building a modern brand with ethical standards, trust and transparency at the forefront,” Alba says in a news release after citing the company’s “strategic shift from e-commerce to omni-channel brand.”

“The sky's the limit for what Honest can become and I look forward to working alongside Nick on the next phase of our journey,” Alba also says, meaning Vlahos knows the inside aisles inside-out.

“Honest’s board launched a search for a new CEO about three months ago, according to people familiar with the matter. Their goal was to find an experienced executive in the consumer and retail industry who could rein in operating expenses and manage Honest more like a traditional consumer-products company, the people said. Much of the company’s future sales growth is expected to come from traditional retailers, rather than e-commerce, they added,” report Sharon Terlep and Serena Ng for the Wall Street Journal.

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“The talks started after a rough year for five-year-old Honest Co., after its IPO plans were put on hold. The company then had acquisition talks with Unilever, only to see the firm acquire another environmentally friendly company, Seventh Generation, instead,” points out writes CNBC’s Lauren Thomas. 

“In December, Honest Co. announced that it would cut 80 jobs in early 2017, and that President Sean Kane, as well as CFO and COO David Parker, were leaving the company,” Thomas continues.

“The move mirrors what Fortune reporter Beth Kowitt argued late last year: despite the fact that Honest pitched itself to media as a tech startup, its business is selling diapers, laundry detergent, beauty products, and other household goods,” writes  Fortune’s John Kell. “The ‘disruption’ Honest is trying to do is more about popular consumer staples and less about technology.”

Vlahos has held executive positions at other brands including Burt's Bees, Brita and Green Works. He has been with Clorox for 22 years “and will help steer the baby and personal care products company as it aims to expand distribution and build upon the $300 million in sales it generated last year,” Kell writes.

“It has been our strategy to evolve the company into an omnichannel brand and Nick’s tremendous background building global [consumer products goods] brands makes him the ideal person to lead us there,” Lee said in the company’s release.

“His role at Burt’s Bees may be notable to Honest Company customers who choose its products because they believe in its nontoxic, eco-friendly branding. The association with ‘Clorox’ might not resonate in quite the same way,” writes Jason Del Rey for Recode.

Truth be told, they’ll be more focused on the company first-ever consumer branding campaign, “Honest Moments,” which launched last month.

“This campaign is about reaching out to our customers about the moments in their lives, in particular going from being an individual to having another life to care for,” Honest Company SVP of creative Liz Elert tells  Co.Create’s Jeff Beer.

“The Big One,” the first spot of a dozen spots on the campaign, broke on an episode of “The Batchelor” last month. Featuring a score by will.i.am and footage provided by the narrators, it shows mothers telling stories about the birth of their children. 

It’s “a fitting way to launch the consumer-goods company’s first campaign, given that Alba was purportedly inspired to start The Honest Company after the birth of her first child,” Eric Oster writes for Adweek.

“‘The Big One’ doesn’t promote a particular Honest Company product. Instead, it serves as an encapsulation of the brand’s ‘For this moment. For every moment’ tagline, relying on the emotional weight of childbirth,” Oster continues.

Overall, there are a dozen spots in the can, including “The Personal Stylist — Friend of the Animals,” a :15 that shows a mom discussing wardrobe choices with her toddler. Then there’s “The Bold-Faced Lie,” a :15 plug for Honest Wipes that depicts a dad asking his towheaded son, “Liam, did you get into the chocolate again?” Liam’s adamant “no” is a pitch-perfect, one-word embodiment of the Irish art of blarney.

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