Wolfgang Puck is a celebrity chef. Jennifer Flavin-Stallone, co-founder of Serious Skin Care, is a former model, current wife of Rocky. But in selling mode, they feel as if they could be your friends or maybe even… you. Puck never tries to dazzle: He tells stories about his children and keeps the chefly flouncing to a minimum. Flavin-Stallone, who could give a hypnotist lessons in eye contact, blunts the glam with a dress-down sweater and exudes an all-girlfriends-together coziness. Her set looks like a makeup counter in the least-intimidating boutique on earth, and she mixes flesh-tone advice with confessions of her own struggles with acne. "She's like the popular senior in high school when you were a freshman," says Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School marketing professor. "These people are aspirational, but they don't seem too far beyond customers' reach. The product becomes a bridge to bring the customer toward them."