In early December, Base Beauty Creative Agency’s marketing team hosted a webinar titled 2023 YearEnder Mega Moments. For this celebratory look at our agency’s wins and learnings, we were joined by clients, colleagues, and industry friends to review some highlights of 2023 and look ahead to 2024.
As part of the presentation, we used four female phenoms who owned the summer of 2023, each in her own way. We looked at their sparkling marketing campaigns to illustrate how we approach marketing programs for our clients. The marketers behind the Barbie movie, Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour and film, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and film, and The Little Mermaid movie crafted campaigns that utilized a broad range of strategies. The marketing for these four cultural juggernauts was carefully designed to work synergistically, resulting in spectacular impacts that can only be described with adjectives from dazzling to astounding to over-the-top to simply “wow.”
Our presentation broke down the campaigns for these four icons into their major components, which just happen to reflect our agency name and how we holistically approach the campaigns we create for our clients. Here are the pillars of our B-A-S-E marketing strategy:
Breadcrumbs: These are the tempting teasers dangled before an event that create excitement. Barbie released images of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in character; Beyoncé used her social media accounts to include the song title Break My Soul, teasing the release date.
Breadcrumbs at Base Beauty: For a cosmetics client, we posted pre-launch Instagram stories asking followers to vote on new shades of a lip oil and to send suggestions while also announcing the shades that would be available at retailer Ulta Beauty so consumers could plan their purchases. Small on their own, these little moments add up to create a lot of buzz. Our breadcrumbs resulted in Ulta tripling their original order of the lip oil to meet the increased demand we created.
Audience Participation: It’s important to include fans and make them part of a campaign. The Barbie folks had a Barbie Box photo booth at the movie theaters for Barbie-themed selfies; Beyoncé asked those attending her birthday show to wear silver; and Taylor Swift established her legendary friendship bracelets that fans create and swap at her shows.
Audience Participation at Base Beauty: We used the audience participation method for a professional skincare client whose audience is dermatologists and aestheticians. In October, members of our team participated in the brand’s advanced clinical training conference and spoke to the pros in attendance about how to post on their own social accounts as well as the brand’s Instagram. By including and coaching these derms, we saw a 24% increase in the brand’s mentions in IG stories.
Social Media and Press: Obviously, we all use social media and press to create buzz and drive earned and paid media to engage with consumers. All of our four illustrative icons—Barbie, Beyoncé, Taylor, and The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey—heavily used their social media presence and press placements to drive credibility, brand awareness, and trust, sharing updates, concert and show news, creating enthusiasm with fans and encouraging those fans to spread all this excitement with their networks.
Social Media and Press at Base Beauty: Our agency uses social media all the time, as we did for a campaign for a long-time skincare client where we utilized this tactic to drive brand awareness, credibility, and trust across a professional and consumer marketplace, using media relations, paid partnerships with influencers and KOLs, a seeding program that leveraged existing relationships, including with celebrities, influencers, and dermatologists. We were able to turn a sleeper product into a breakout product on Google Trends with a 5000% increase in just two years!
Experiential and Partnerships: Here’s where we create experiences to bring campaigns to life as brands team up with like-minded brands to acquire new consumers. Some examples of these collaborations are Barbie and Airbnb teaming up for Barbie’s Mail Mood Dream House, The Little Mermaid and booking.com for an under-the-sea-themed homestay, and Starbucks’s collaborating with Tayor Swift’s Eras tour with drinks named after Taylor’s albums.
Experiential and Partnerships at Base Beauty: We partnered with a client that’s one of the country’s largest beauty trade shows. We used influencer partnerships and events during the show to elevate the show’s status, landing us media coverage on top-tier websites such as WWD and Beauty Launchpad. At the same time, we created guest experiences that attendees shared expansively.
We love this somewhat eponymous summary of our strategic marketing tactics—tactics that work for our clients as well as for some of the biggest names on the planet. Base Beauty’s COO, Aleni Mackarey, Ph.D., MS, and I believe more than ever in the power of data-driven creative marketing strategies that work holistically to create a powerful impact. This is what we do every day.
Message our CEO with your thoughts: What are some of your sparkling marketing wins for 2023? We’d love to hear about them.