Honest Beauty taps into video, social with app for first campaign
The Honest Company's new beauty brand, Honest Beauty is starting its first brand campaign with a call-to-action push on social media, a new application, mobile video and user-generated images to gain popularity amongst millennial consumers.
The beauty line is making its marketing debut and focusing on mobile to make sure its brand is well received with young women, leveraging a variety of mobile tools. The brand has launched in-app digital makeup testing through augmented reality, social media integration, personalized lookbook and mobile video to maximize awareness.
"It is extremely important to leverage mobile on a campaign like Honest Beauty," said Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis. "Honest Beauty is offering a free sample for consumers to try the brand when they download the app, with this action, they are starting to create their customer base and can build on a relationship that can continue to grow and become viral with each and every satisfied customer that receives a sample.
"Honest Beauty needs to keep in mind that each and every sample ordered is a chance for a viral campaign from a social media post that could be shared and could get amazing attention," she said. "Each customer is extremely valuable and is worth everything to them.
"Mobile campaigns and mobile marketing will help them if continued steadily."
Mobile company policy
Jessica Alba is the co-founder and face of the Honest Company, known for its natural non-toxic household products. Honest Beauty is the company?s first step into beauty products, and launched the brand in September.
The brand is tapping into Ms. Alba?s star power and the pull of mobile video with a day-in-the-life vignette showcasing moments through her day in which she reaches for her Honest Beauty products. The Honest Beauty app coincides with the campaign and mimics popular makeups apps such as Perfect365, allowing users to superimpose makeup on selfies.
Mobile users take a photo of themselves through the camera in the app and then choose Honest Beauty products they would like to virtually try on. The app uses augmented reality technology to show them what the makeup would look like on, and users can share the images with friends on social media.
Honest Beauty is also encourages users to share pictures of themselves modeling the products throughout their day, similar to Jessica Alba?s video on social media with the hashtag #letsbehonest. The brand is hoping participants will name their looks, coinciding with their activities such as hanging out with the boyfriend and going out to brunch.
The brand is hoping for a big win with this campaign, as its parent company received a bevvy of ironic criticism from customers claiming products are mislabeled as natural and that a sunscreen product did not work at all. The negative outcry gained greater notoriety due to the use of honesty in its name.
Beauty and mobile
Similarly, L?Oreal wants to be a leader in the next generation of mobile innovation for the beauty sector by helping startups Cast Beauty and MikMak build their businesses (see more).
Beauty brands Mac, Sephora and Maybelline are losing voice in the social conversation surrounding beauty and skincare to non-traditional brands such as eBay, Amazon and Etsy, according to a new report from NetBase (see more).
"The push here is to get users to become involved with the brand through social media," Ms. Troutman said. "The reward is that they could get published on the website with their own named look, which gives consumers an extra added incentive to test the product and share via social media, along with makeup artists, influencers and the companies own employees, i.e, professionals.
"Following the hashtag #letsbehonest would benefit the consumer within the industry as well," she said. "Mobile makes this process of sharing with the phones camera easy."
Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer
