Ten years ago, marketing “inner beauty” seemed like a revolution. We welcome brands like Dove went beyond conventional and superficial expectations. Today, however, this advertising tactic has developed its own forms of advertising. Everyone uses the word “real”, retouching is taboo and women of all shapes and ethnicities all appreciated their external flaws.
With future thinking as these campaigns strive to be, many of them still cling to the script of aspirational advertising; At this point, the face and body seem to blur together. So when MAC Cosmetics got ready to launch MACnificent Me, a year-long user-generated content campaign, it decided to take that script to pieces.
Last year, MAC challenged Hush, the company behind the campaign, to provide consumers with a platform for personal, emotional self-expression without depending on photography. Instead of asking fans to publicly submit photos of their favorite eye color or # BestAngle Hush built a small website and invited users to submit the mantra “illustrating their style, heart, and soul,” along with a 100-personality-word essay and photo.
“We proposed something that had never been done: a UGC makeup campaign with no ‘before’ images to choose a winner,” explains Hush creative director Jodi Terwilliger. “We proposed user-generated messages of positivity and self-empowerment that would ultimately lead to winners who would be fulfilled.”
After submitting an inspirational spell, users can personalize their entry even further by choosing from a set of fonts, designs, and colors. The interactivity and positivity of the site has certainly led to incredible engagement. 70 thousand people provided a total of 100,000 mantras. And on average, visitors spent more than eight minutes checking out existing mantras.
Dan Rodriguez, the campaign’s director of customer engagement, notes that a unique user experience may have contributed to time spent on the site. Users can enter their mantra before creating an account and submitting, which means “participants feel a level of connection and investment in the campaign before traditional barriers to entry are reached.” that system.”
A streamlined user experience also encourages mobile interaction: 70 percent of users interacted with the contest using their mobile devices. But how did they come to the competition in the first place?
“While a campaign that leverages all of the pay, own, and monetization channels is expected, the majority of traffic comes directly from and from social media,” Rodriguez told me via email.
Surprisingly, executive producer Katie Hepp wouldn’t categorize microsites as mobile-first. “The design process starts with the desktop, but we always consider the mobile impacts,” she explains.
MAC has a history of stellar partnerships, from 19-year-old pop star Lorde to 93 to fashion icon Iris Apfel. RuPaul was the face of MAC in 1995, and Nicki Minaj designed the Viva Glam line. For this campaign, MAC selected six fans from around the world, inviting them to New York City, where they will participate in a photo session and become the face of autumn. MAC 2015 makeup campaign.
Six new MAC representatives have documented their experiences through video journals now posted on the campaign’s mini-website. Dressed and made up to match Alice’s Wonderland, each winner wrote their spell on the blackboard wall.
Throughout the campaign, MAC and Hush color appropriately outside the lines of most beauty content initiatives inside. James Gager, MAC Creative Director, was tell iD : “I don’t like marketing in general. “People see through what is driven by marketing.”
As Ji Won Kim, one of the six finalists, wrote as her mantra: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” If MAC needed a spell for its marketing, it would definitely be it.
