• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, January 28, 2025

 
Mielle, the textured hair company acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2023, is making a move into hydration with the Kalahari Melon & Aloe Vera collection. It’s the company's first major launch under the P&G beauty brands umbrella, and Mielle hopes the line will resonate with the fast-changing demands in natural hairstyles. Omar Goff, the 20-year P&G vet now president of the multicultural hair brand, tells Marketing Daily what’s driving the launch.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 Marketing Daily: Tell us about the new launch, the first under P&G.

Omar Goff: When we started together in 2023, some innovation had already been locked in, and we helped with the marketing. But this introduction, the Kalahari Melon & Aloe Vera collection, is the first where P&G has been involved from the beginning to launch.

Marketing Daily: What’s the line like?

Goff: Mielle, a brand that’s 10 years old, has always done a great job of identifying key needs and looking for ways to stay on-trend. That hasn’t changed. But with access to broader consumer insights, we've been able to go deeper to understand consumer tensions. We can develop products that solve the jobs that need to be done.

This launch responds to many people's fatigue when wearing natural hair. There’s the painstaking chore of washing hair, styling it -- and having it look terrible by day three. And there’s the fatigue associated with figuring out what to do in between wash days. We fell in love with that problem, worked with our existing manufacturing partners and technical research teams, and birthed this Kalahari melon and aloe collection.

Marketing Daily: This a very competitive area, right?

Goff: Absolutely. There are a lot of great brands, all focused on the same problems, so you see a lot of overlap. Monique Rodriguez, co-founder and CEO, has always prided herself on finding ingredients that provide unique benefits. Babassu oil, for example, is one of the brand’s early hits and is still a favorite. It’s got great repairative properties.

Same with the Kalahari melon -- who knew what that was? We looked for ingredients that retain moisture in the most arid environments and found it in the Namibian desert. Combined with aloe’s tried-and-true power, the ingredient is strong enough to break through coily hair and moisturize the inside. The hydration is so long-lasting that people can go from wash day to wash day and retain the moisture in their hair. And the fragrance is incredible.

Marketing Daily: How are you addressing haircare fatigue in marketing?

Goff: We’ve got a new ad -- our second TV commercial. And we’ve gone the non-celebrity approach. We’re asking consumers, “What could you do with five extra days?” Ads showcase all the different things happening throughout the hero's life, the different hairstyles she can maintain, the activities she can do, and all the time she’s saved.

Our audience is intrigued by the idea of worrying less. What would life be like without having to think about hair every morning? Not to have to trade off activities because they’re afraid of what may happen to their hair?

The agency is 19th & Park, owned by Black women. And we were very intentional about having Black women in front of and behind the camera.

We're also going big with our WNBA partnership. Those are very active women who need great, long-lasting products to maintain their lifestyles.

We’ll also be partnering with some run clubs. Those have become popular in the Black community. We’ll also include an amazing new song from Flyanna Boss.

The campaign is very social first -- you'll see a lot more from us on Snapchat and TikTok, making sure we get to our core audience in new, exciting, disruptive ways.

Marketing Daily: You’ve been at P&G for 20 years, much of the time at Old Spice, a mass brand. And you’ve been president of Mielle for almost two years. What’s that transition been like?

Goff: A complete change. First, I’m focused on women. And at Old Spice, I was trying to push cultural relevancy for a very low-involvement category. Men don’t care that much about their deodorant.

Mielle had already done a great job of establishing cultural relevancy, always trying to drive excitement. Hair care is a very high-involvement category. I don’t need to convince women to care about their hair or stress the cultural relevance of textured hair.

I just get to double down on what was already great and find partnerships to amplify our message -- like with the WNBA -- to bring it to life.

Mielle appears in “One of Them Days,” a movie that just opened. We’ll be doing some integrations with CW’s “All-American: Homecoming” because we're passionate about reaching the Historically Black College and Universities.

Marketing Daily: Black consumers have endured a turbulent five years, marked by brands frequently failing to uphold genuine connections with and commitments to Black communities. Watching Mielle move from a Black-owned independent brand to a small P&G brand is a change that has turned off some customers. How do you communicate authenticity?

Goff: By getting into the world of influencers. There's a lot of skepticism starting to emerge there. People want real stories from real people. And they want to know we care about them. Now that we’re a nine-figure brand, expanding globally, we will continue to support the same events we did as a $5 million brand. We never forget where we've come from. We continue to support those who have always supported us.

That means we have an amazing group of loyal mavens who have been with us for years, and we continue cultivating those relationships.

Marketing Daily: What’s been the biggest revelation to you?

Goff: That everyone has a unique hair routine. I cannot find any consistency in habits. People are a lot more prone to use the same brand for different components of their personal care journey -- but mot with hair. People use multiple brands.