“Beauty and haircare brands are really missing out by not working with college athletes because we’re the girls actually wearing the edge controls, the eyelashes,” said Angel Reese in a video on Twitter in early April, before rattling through a list of brands she wanted to work with that included Mielle Organics.
“My hair lashes, nails, everything is always done … it’s about being able to be cute and still get buckets,” she said.
After seeing the post, the textured hair care brand knew it would need to act fast to sign Reese. The college basketball star was propelled into the global spotlight that month after leading Louisiana State University to its first national championship, in what was the most watched NCAA women’s basketball game of all time.
Reese began the March Madness tournament with 447,000 followers on Instagram. Today, she has over 2 million followers on both TikTok and Instagram.
Mielle Organics founder Monique Rodriguez and president Omar Goff saw a star in the making — and better yet, one who already used their products on and off-court. It took just over two weeks from initially making contact with Reese to her announcement as Mielle’s latest ambassador last month. As part of the deal, Reese is set to front the brand’s first ever commercial, appear at consumer-facing brand events and curate her own product bundles.
“Beauty brands are so underrepresented in sports like basketball,” Goff told The Business of Beauty. “Mielle is laser-focused on Gen-Z consumers and wants to be the authority in textured hair — who better to represent us than someone who shows night-in night-out that being at the peak of your performance doesn’t need to come at the expense of looking good.”
Working with athletes isn’t a new phenomenon for beauty brands. But in the past, commercial deals were reserved for the highest-profile athletes like Serena Williams or confined to…
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