Moroccanoil’s Passionate, Focused, and Disciplined Brand Management Success Story

photo via moroccanoil.com

I recently worked America's Beauty Show 2012 in Chicago and Moroccanoil was my favorite professional hair-care brand at the show. Harvard Business Review could write a case study called “Moroccanoil: Brand Management 101” or more descriptively, “How-to Successfully Build a Brand with Passion, Focus, and Discipline.”


Moroccanoil’s passion for its product is personal; lore on the company website has the founder’s hair being saved from serious processing damage by a treatment of Moroccanoil’s active ingredient, argan oil, while visiting the Middle East. It took 18 months to develop a product line and was test-marketed in Israel for three years before launching in North America in 2007.

At the time of Moroccanoil’s launch most other hair-care companies were touting oil-free products that appeared “light weight” and “cleaner.” The company took a huge risk by focusing completely on what made it different: oil. Oil is the products’ main component and argan oil is one of the most expensive oils in the world.

Unlike many professional hair-care brands, Moroccanoil did not release a cleansing/styling suite of products meant to be used together as a system. The company had the discipline to employ just four products: Moroccanoil Treatment, Hydrating Styling Cream, Intense Hydrating Masque, and Intense Curl Cream. Each independently solves a different hair-related problem.

In my opinion, the company could have simply released one product, the original Moroccanoil Treatment, because it is the star product that made shiny, super-straight hair the dominant trend of the last few years. Since Moroccanoil Treatment is basically oil in a bottle, it might have been too radical to succeed on its own without having recognizable products like rinse-out conditioners and leave-in creams associated with it.

Remember when you were little and got sick? The doctor prescribed medicine that came in a brown, glass bottle and you felt better less than 24-hours later. The flagship product, Moroccanoil Treatment, comes in that same glass bottle and makes unhealthy hair better in less than a day; it works on its first application.

The label is robin’s egg blue, our national color of spring. It symbolizes regeneration and renewel, and is often associated with Easter. Appropriate for Moroccanoil Treatment because the product will, dare I say, resurrect your hair from the dead.

The company’s logo is a large, orange, uppercase “M”; a complementary color scheme to the robin’s egg blue label.  The contrasting orange font against the blue is no less dramatic than the before and after condition of hair using Moroccanoil Treatment.

Today Moroccanoil has 16 hair-care items in its product arsenal, all still featuring argan oil as the main problem solver. Adding products to the brand’s portfolio is not necessarily unwise or uncommon. What’s uncommon is Moroccanoil’s discipline in building a strong brand following with only a few core products that solved real-world hair problems before launching a bigger portfolio. This well thought out brand launch is likely the key to the company’s business success.