Barefoot Wine toasts beauty experience of Black women with video series

Dive Brief:

Barefoot Wine on Tuesday launched “We Stan for Her," a four-part web series highlighting the beauty experience of Black women in the U.S, according to a press release.
The series features musician-actress Jordin Sparks, dancer-actress Ashley Everett and Melissa Butler, the CEO and founder of beauty brand The Lip Bar, as they share their personal journeys, obstacles and successes. The topics covered include Black women's natural hair; their heritage and upbringing; Black women's representation in the beauty industry; and self-love and acceptance.
The video series is part of the wine company's #WeStanForHer campaign, which is meant to reassert the company's commitment to Black women, per the press release.

Dive Insight:

Though consumers might not associate a wine company with the beauty industry, Barefoot Wine noted that the campaign is a continuation of its inclusivity efforts. The #WeStanForHer campaign is supposed to build on 2019's Project Purple Light initiative, which highlighted crowdsourced user-submitted content featuring Black women as art and shared the content in a live and online art gallery, the company said. With the video series, Barefoot can engage consumers that are looking for entertaining content while spending time — and increasingly drinking wine — at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Barefoot is among other brands like Schick and Dove looking to promote self-love and acceptance in their ads. Other companies, such as KitchenAid and Ford, have also introduced content marketing and ad campaigns spotlighting women's issues broadly or Black women's plight, respectively. With its web series, the wine company said it hopes to create a space for Black women to share their point of view and push back against traditional beauty ideals.

"As we continue our work highlighting the brilliance, grace and beauty of Black women, Jordin Sparks, Ashley Everett and Melissa Butler each lend their respective voice and incredible stories to the We Stan for Her series," Shannon Armah, associate brand manager for Barefoot, said in the press release. "We hope the discussions shared throughout the series create moments for all Black women to feel seen and celebrated, while also sparking important dialogue amongst viewers."

Research has shown that marketers have been increasingly investing in content marketing campaigns like Barefoot's video series, and that diversifying their campaigns win over consumers. Marketers increased their investment in content marketing last year by 73% on average over the previous two years, according to a survey by the Association of National Advertisers and The Content Council. Plus, brands with the most representative advertisements experienced an average stock gain of 44% over a seven-quarter period that ended the previous year, according to a 2019 report from the Deloitte-owned agency Heat.