Dive Brief:
- L’Oreal brands including Maybelline have seen success from upping their investments in Pinterest in order to reach Gen Z, according to details shared by the social media platform.
- Maybelline’s investment in Gen Z on Pinterest has grown by 90% year over year, and nearly half (48%) of its engaged audience on the platform is from the cohort. Gen Z is also the primary driver of increased search traffic on Pinterest for the term “maybelline.”
- L’Oreal and its brands, including Essie and Garnier, served as the exclusive launch partner for Pinterest’s Collages Remix feature. For the back-to-school period, Maybelline created Collages Remixes that drove significant engagement for the brand.
Dive Insight:
As brands continue to focus on reaching the coveted Gen Z demographic, Pinterest has been positioning itself as the means to do so. Nearly all (84%) of Gen Z weekly Pinterest users report that they discover products that fit their taste and style while shopping on the platform, per details shared with Marketing Dive. Gen Z also makes up the platform’s fastest-growing audience and represents 42% of its global user base.
In hopes of shoring up loyalty from the younger cohort, L'Oréal brands have been experimenting with Pinterest’s new advertising features. The makeup and skincare giant was the exclusive launch partner for Collages Remix, a tool announced by Pinterest in September. Collages Remix allows Pinterest users to collaborate and build on existing collages — an interactive Pin, or virtual bookmark, format made up of cutouts — and encourages them to create shoppable, branded user-generated content.
L'Oréal brands including Maybelline, Garnier, Essie and NYX Professional Makeup were among the first to market with Collages Remix. For the effort, each brand had a one-week feature in the Collage creation flow, a premium placement that was built for L'Oréal, and marketed around a different back-to-school or back-to-college trend. For Maybelline’s part, the brand created Collages Remixes that tapped into the “CorpCore” fashion aesthetic and reported an engagement rate over five-times higher than the brand and the beauty vertical’s average.
Along with Maybelline’s deeper investments in Gen Z on Pinterest, searches for “maybelline” on the platform have increased 32% year over year, with half of those searches coming from Gen Z, per release details.
For Halloween, Maybelline partnered with Pinterest to receive an advanced look at its latest trends report for the holiday and leveraged the brand’s “Babellines” influencer network to create seasonal custom tutorials inspired by the trends. The beauty brand is also dedicating a portion of its site to spotlight Halloween trends and influencer content.
L'Oréal’s efforts on Pinterest are a signal of how legacy beauty marketers are attempting to age down to stay relevant as those newer to the industry, like E.l.f. and Rare Beauty — the top two cosmetic brands among Gen Z — climb the ranks. Beyond Pinterest, Maybelline is also attempting to tap into Halloween hype with the younger cohort by advertising around the return of Snapchat’s “Phantom House” content series.
Other marketers, like Pacsun and Urban Outfitters, have also leveraged Pinterest recently for their digital-focused marketing efforts. Pinterest in the second quarter reported revenue of $854 million, a 21% year-over-year increase. The platform will report its third quarter results Nov. 7 after market close.
