Personal care brand and direct selling retailer Avon's latest empowerment campaign leverages social media, celebrities and a mobile-optimized aggregation site to engage customers around the topic of empowering women. 

The Beauty for a Purpose campaign is encouraging social media users to get involved in a conversation surrounding women empowerment with its representatives and its customers. Using celebrities, storytelling abilities, a digital aggregate Web site and social platforms, the brand hopes to secure its image as an authentic business for woman empowerment. 

"Social media is hugely important for this," said Jasmine Sandler, digital marketing strategist. "Social media was built on cause-based marketing. 

"Today social media changes and shapes industry movements," she said. "Women professionals and entrepreneurs continue to be on the rise. 

"But the truth about real opportunities, share of wallet should be told and told from a leader in beauty and women in business, such as Avon. The key for Avon's success will be the authenticity of its messaging and social brand. The company needs to understand the current and future needs of working women, young and old for its campaign to have the strongest effect, in my opinion."

Representing authentic brand
The retailer sells its products to local representatives distributing to friends and family. The brand?s business plan is to be a leader in aspiring women and feels that its practices give women the tools to be successful through being a part of the brand. 

Through Beauty for a Purpose, the brand is leveraging its representatives to kick off the conversation through social media with images that represent women empowerment. The brand has aggregated all these posts to a mobile optimized Web site that features these posts from various social media platforms. 


Avon's social media aggregate site featuring user posts with the #BeautyforaPurpose hashtag

Avon has now opened its conversation to consumers across all platforms, and is hoping that the personal appeal of local representatives will be enough to motivate the conversation and increase the authenticity of the campaign. 

The brand will also soon be rolling out posts with celebrity spokeswoman discussing topics related to women empowerment. For instance a video featuring Fergie will showcase how she sees career, love and life differently and celebrity Avon makeup artist Lauren Anderson discussing her career path. 

There will also be a piece regarding Breast Cancer and advice for graduates. But the retailer is not giving up its chance to showcase its products, with one featured post showcasing the evolution of Avon lipstick and another regarding the most loved Avon products around the world. 

Men are also encouraged to join the conversation with another campaign coinciding with Beauty for a Purpose in time for Father?s Day. This puts a different spin on the usual women?s empowerment campaign and incorporates all consumers in the discussion. 

A video from Avon on YouTube reaches out to fathers asking them to take a stand for daughters everywhere. Fathers can also share a customizable digital card through email or social media along with shareable images and GIFs. 

Empowering campaigns
Women empowerment campaigns are nothing new but it is still an important aspect of marketing, as consumers lean towards brand that make an authentic stand for a good cause. 

For example, American Eagle Outfitters lingerie brand Aerie recently launched a Love Your Selfie campaign complete with a hashtag and the world?s largest un-retouched selfie (see more). 

Also, L?Oreal Paris rolled out a campaign to coincide with the brand?s new Advanced Haircare line and is asking social media users to share their powerful hair moments on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with a specified hashtag for a chance to meet supermodel Karlie Kloss, proving that incentives are key for beauty campaigns on social (see more). 

"What strikes as me as different about this campaign is that it is included men in its support of women," Ms. Sandler said. "This is timely, I believe. In our economic conditions today, women are more and more becoming power players in the household. 

"It is inevitable that men need to support women," she said. "The key to the campaign's success are multiple, in my experience, engaging content based on user profiling and real-time data, support of influencers in the segment during the entirety of the campaign and a proper digital strategy with key target research and mining."

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer