Avon Is Calling on a Younger Crowd

Monique Pridgeon has just challenged her friends to name eight different shades of lip gloss she sells, but they are hard-pressed to come up with more than two. "This stuff is right on the table!" Pridgeon shouts in mock frustration.

And, in fact, the coffee table in her aunt's Silver Spring living room is covered with so much lip gloss, lip shine, lipstick, eye shadow, eye glimmer, chocolate-scented soap and kiwi-lotus body lotion that it looks like a department store cosmetics counter.

Pridgeon, 30, invited eight young women for food, girl talk and tips on selling the new brand, mark, Avon's first attempt at designing makeup geared to teenagers and college students.

But Avon's hip new lipsticks are being sold the old-fashioned way: at gatherings like this, reminiscent of the Tupperware parties of the 1950s where homemakers gathered to eat, drink coffee and buy the newfangled plastic bowls. And direct sales are, of course, part of the company's own tradition of the Avon Lady who once went door-to-door selling cosmetics and who still works from home.

The centerpiece of Avon's strategy is parties like Pridgeon's, "beauty bashes," where mark sales representatives persuade their friends to buy the makeup and even start selling it themselves. Pridgeon, who has sold more than $1,000 worth, has already convinced several of her guests to sign up as saleswomen.

The mark campaign gets high marks for inventiveness from marketers, stock analysts and fashion editors. The parties are part of a nine-month-old marketing campaign that features hip marketing methods, too, such as commercials on MTV and catchy print advertisements.

The print ads are designed to arouse the curiosity of young women, about the products and the possibility of selling them, since mark, like other Avon products, is sold only through direct-sales representatives and a Web site.

The advertisements in fashion magazines such as Allure show head shots of real mark sales reps saying things like, "Mark helped me pay for college and thickened my lashes," and urges women to "Meet mark."

Tina Wells, chief executive of the youth-oriented Buzz Marketing Group, based in New Jersey, says the ads click with teenage girls.

"They're like, 'Who's mark? What is mark? Is he a boy? Is he cute?' " said Wells, 24, who spends her days scouting trends, taking 15-year-olds out for pizza and accompanying them to proms.

The ads worked on Pridgeon and her friends. She became a sales rep after seeing a TV spot in September. Sporting a newsboy cap, tight black pants and stiletto heels, Pridgeon tests her pupils on which actress graces the cover of the upcoming mark catalogue or how many shades of lip gloss mark sells. (At her day job, Pridgeon schedules commercials at the Travel Channel.)

At 4 on a recent Saturday afternoon, the guests, mostly single, are glammed out: The uniform seems to be heels, off-the-shoulder tops and dangly earrings. All wear full makeup, including eye shadow, mascara and blush. They're also college-educated and ambitious. One is an internal investigator for the Homeland Security Department, one a bank manager and another an advertising sales assistant for a local television station.

Like at a Tupperware party, they share a potluck meal of lasagna, garlic bread and fruit salad while a Mariah Carey special plays on a muted television.

What they all have in common is a friendship with Pridgeon and little experience in direct selling.