The Little Samples That Built Big Beauty

The object that explains Behrman Cesa Communications is not a press release. It is a tiny jar. A sample. Something small enough to slip into a handbag and generous enough to settle an argument. In the beauty business, where adjectives breed faster than evidence, a sample lets the cream speak for itself. Nancy Behrman understood that early. The agency she founded in 1985 says it helped introduce widespread product sampling to public relations. The tactic now feels inevitable, which is what often happens to a good idea after everybody copies it.

Behrman's first account was Kiehl's Since 1851, then far closer to neighborhood secret than global skincare fixture. The relationship grew from a peculiar assignment at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Behrman had been sent to publicize Jami Morse, who was teaching aerobics to the Austrian men's ski team and would later take charge at Kiehl's. The assignment landed attention. Morse remembered. Two years later, she called. Behrman opened her firm from a studio apartment at 24, with one client and very little institutional furniture to get in the way.

The product gets the last word

The conventional agency sells access to attention. Behrman Cesa sells a sequence. First, locate what the firm calls a brand's “it factor” - the detail that makes a product more than another tube on an already crowded shelf. Then make that detail legible. Put it in the hands of an editor, creator, aesthetician, physician or customer who has a reason to care. Build the story around what happens next. When the product is genuinely distinctive, experience becomes the proof and the audience becomes the distribution system.

That is what the company means by loving “white space.” An established category gives a brand a shelf. White space gives it a problem: people lack the words to describe what they are looking at. The agency's job is partly linguistic. Brand positioning, packaging copy, launch strategy and media narrative all make novelty easier to retell. Its other job is social: connect that clean sentence to the editors, tastemakers, experts, retailers and investors who can move it along.

“We love a white space; we love being able to create and build.”Nancy Behrman

One agency, two tempos

In 2010, Gianna Cesa joined Behrman Communications as an account executive. Thirteen years later, she became partner, and the agency put the transition in public view by changing its name to Behrman-Cesa Communications. It was an unusually plainspoken succession signal. Behrman remained CEO. Cesa, now president, brought the tempo of a media system that no longer waits for the monthly magazine to arrive.

The current service list reads like a record of everything that happened to PR while the agency was in business. Print, television and radio remain. Beside them sit digital media, influencer seeding, paid creator work, social strategy, affiliate marketing, analytics and experiential events. Behind the visible campaign are less glamorous services that may matter more: assortment advice, distribution strategy, competitive analysis, corporate messaging and crisis counsel. Beauty launches now behave like relay races. A story earns attention, a creator demonstrates it, an affiliate link records action, a retail placement supplies legitimacy, and the numbers decide who runs the next lap.

What changed the agency's mind was not one grand failure but the slow collapse of a channel monopoly. The old playbook assumed a relatively small circle of editors could confer importance. The new one accepts that influence is scattered across publications, feeds, search results, specialists, store shelves and private group chats. Behrman Cesa did not abandon sampling or relationships. It expanded the number of places where trial and trust can happen.

A client is not a campaign

The agency's public history includes Kiehl's, Burt's Bees, Clarisonic, IT Cosmetics, COOLA, Supergoop!, Olly Nutrition, Nutrafol, Ulta Beauty and a long cabinet of other names. These are not all current clients, and the agency is careful to describe the roster as past and present. The more revealing detail is duration. Kiehl's stayed until its 2001 sale to L'Oréal. Behrman has said the firm worked with COOLA through its sale to SC Johnson. The endpoint the agency likes to discuss is not a clipping book. It is a company becoming valuable.

That makes Behrman Cesa different from a generalist publicity shop. Its expertise sits where consumer desire, professional credibility, retail math and founder psychology overlap. A skincare launch may need dermatologists before celebrities. A hair-tool collaboration may need Target, creators and design media to tell the same story without sounding rehearsed. A young founder may need honest counsel about the assortment before anyone needs another press release. The product is only the opening move.

What a founder can steal

The portable lesson is not “hire a publicist.” It is to design a chain in which every participant has an obvious next action. Let the customer try the thing. Give the expert a credible claim to assess. Give the creator a visual demonstration rather than a stack of slogans. Give the editor a tension, not a brochure. Give the retailer evidence that attention can become a basket. Each link should make the next one cheaper.

The second lesson is narrower: specialization compounds. Behrman began with one unusually vivid beauty account, produced a result, and let referrals do much of the selling. In a founder interview, she said the business turned a profit in under a year. The present agency still earns fees for service rather than selling a product or software subscription. It does not publish a rate card; the cost depends on the mix of PR, creators, digital work, events and advice. That makes the model labor-intensive, but it also makes judgment the product.

There is a useful mismatch to notice. This approach depends on a product that rewards trial, a founder willing to refine the story, and enough operational capacity to meet demand if attention arrives. It is less natural for a commodity with no experiential advantage, a company seeking instant paid reach, or a team that wants publicity to disguise an unresolved product problem. Sampling can settle an argument only when the sample has a persuasive case.

The cleverness of Behrman Cesa's history is therefore easy to miss. The agency did not make the story bigger than the product. It made the distance between them smaller. A little jar crossed that distance first. Now the jar travels with a creator brief, an affiliate code, a dashboard and perhaps an introduction to a retailer. The machinery changed. The wager did not.