The global beauty and personal care market is projected to reach US $677.19 billion in 2025. With hundreds of thousands of brands competing for attention, it’s a highly saturated space.
And with consumers as young as Gen Alpha experimenting with beauty products, the age of entry is getting younger, meaning brands need to get savvier and meet consumers where they are.
Coty is a multinational beauty company known for developing, manufacturing, marketing, and distributing fragrances, makeup, and skin and body care products. Coty has over 40 brands in its portfolio, ranging from high-street favorites like CoverGirl and Rimmel to high-end labels such as Burberry and Gucci.
As the beauty space becomes more competitive, Coty must shape innovative strategies that align with each of its brands to remain the top choice for cosmetic consumers.
Enter CoverGirl.
A beloved American brand on Coty’s roster, CoverGirl is a brand with accessible pricing, cruelty-free formulations, and an emphasis on self-discovery, making it a strong contender among Gen Z.
The Coty team sought out our expertise in connecting to youthful audiences through impactful influencer content to reignite momentum for the Clean Invisible Foundation among Gen Z consumers. We specifically targeted the US Hispanic and Black/African American communities due to the foundation's emphasis on its broad shade range.
We set out to shape a creator-led campaign powered by cultural connection and strategic storytelling to increase brand awareness.
TikTok was the primary discovery platform for the campaign, with 43% of Gen Z beginning beauty searches there. Instagram Reels offered validation and secondary discovery. YouTube Shorts gave our top creators space to expand their stories and deepen audience impact.
Beauty is one of the most popular content themes on TikTok, with 85% of TikTok Shop sales in 2023 falling into the beauty and personal care category. This meant it was essential to develop a strategy to ensure our creator content for CoverGirl would stand out vs. other beauty brands.
We designed a three-layer strategy to align with Gen Z’s content consumption habits:
Foundation Layer: Reliable formats that deliver broad awareness and brand messaging.
Amaya’s usual content is largely beauty-focused, and her audience admires the makeup looks she achieves – particularly her ability to nail a glowy base. She clearly shows exactly how the makeup applies to her skin,and shows the packaging for brand recognition. No voiceover needed. The comments about the product were extremely complimentary.
Elevation Layer: Eye-catching content featuring bold creator personalities.
Edith posts makeup content that is full of personality, but her dominant vertical is lifestyle. This means that when she does promote a beauty product, her audience really trusts her recommendation. She talks her audience through the USPs and also shows how the CoverGirl foundation pairs with other products.
Breakthrough Layer: Trend-led content that tapped into niche subcultures and viral moments.
Eunice’s partnership with CoverGirl landed at the perfect time for her to capitalize on the “AI voiceover” trend. Her audience loved her take on the trend and the fact that they were introduced to a new must-have product.
We collaborated with 12 creators across three strategic tiers:
This campaign soared past expectations – delivering 39% more views than promised while sparking buzz around CoverGirl’s Clean Invisible Foundation among Gen Z proven by a near-perfect 99.57% positive sentiment score.
We hit:
Influencer Marketing was the optimal way for CoverGirl to connect with the Gen Z consumer looking to experiment with a foundation tailored to their skin. Influencers help humanize a brand by creating content that resonates with different consumer groups with different interests, habits, and purchasing behavior.
For this campaign in particular, we noticed…
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