Fenty Beauty — A brand with social media genius.
Fenty Beauty was launched by famous singer Rihanna in 2017 after she spent years experimenting with different beauty brands, and realizing there’s a gap in the industry for a beauty brand with products that were inclusive of all skin types and tones. I have seen the brand grow from its highly anticipated launch to the powerhouse it currently is in the beauty world. Fenty Beauty changed the game in terms of inclusivity in the makeup industry, opening doors for its competitors to join along on the ride. Becoming an aspirational brand in the market, led Fenty Beauty to utilize its social media to solidify its brand and audience base in order to ensure continued success.
At the beginning of their social media presence, the brand focused on building a community through its audience and boosting engagement. They wanted their audience to be more and aimed at making them feel like brand ambassadors. Their goal was clear at that point, they wanted women who felt like makeup brands didn’t listen to them to finally feel heard. They were clever by honing in who their audience was and utilizing their strengths of identifying their community by relating to them through memes, pop culture, and trendign topics. They even launched an extensive influencer campaign which included the likes of supermodel Duckie Thot, to utilizing micro-influencer and even regular social media users. This led the brand to find immediate success with the appropriate audience base they were targeting, women of color of all shades primarily. Not only did they achieve this goal they gained recognition, even being awarded “Invention of the Year” by Time Magazine in 2017. The brand had defined KPIs that focused on engagements on posts (likes, comments, and most importantly shares) because most of their content drove the user to want to interact.
Now after 3 years of grandiose success, the brand’s social media campaign seems to focus on generating sales by always having a call to action tied into all of their posts. Since their product catalog has extended to an array of different items throughout the years, the brand has more than enough inventory for continuously fresh posts that push sales. The main KPI’s for this goal that can be best tracked to gain accurate results of their campaign is shoppable taps, and traffic to the website.
They utilize the Instagram platform’s shoppable features in all their posts so that purchases are easily accessible to their audience base. It is a perfect goal to base off their newer social campaigns since they have continuous product launches they want to ensure lead to prosperous sales. Even with this sales-oriented shift in strategy, they still keep the core of their brand tied to their community and the reason why they started it all. They try to keep their audience involved in the company, giving them exclusive sneak peeks to new products, and always encouraging engagement through their posts.
Recently they started a new content series called, #FentBeautyUniversity around the start of the 2020 Fall semester for most colleges as a way to target that market and provide them tips, tricks, and opportunities to win goodies surrounding their products. Users are able to use the hashtag for a chance to be featured on their social pages. As an added bonus to their new content series, they have included weekly mystery boxes at a discounted price where their audience are led to buy one item and receive 2–3 mystery items with their purchase. This content series is a relatable way to fortify their goal to generate sales by making it an interactive and beneficial experience for their users. I believe the brand has done an incredible job evolving their strategy best to suit business goals as they progress into being a powerhouse in the beauty industry. Being a fan of the brand myself, aside from my knowledge in social, I am proof that what their doing to capture their audience works. It is a genius way to tap into their consumers, making them feel part of a community and continuously keeping them interacted and wanting for more. I am interested to see what the brand does in the future, and how they evolve from the massive success they’ve had in 3 short years. It just goes to show what brands with a purpose can do and how to utilize social media to their advantage in order to achieve their goals and gain success.
Macaela, M. (2017, November 17). Fenty Beauty Is So Groundbreaking, Time Magazine Awarded it “Invention of the Year”. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://www.allure.com/story/fenty-beauty-invention-of-the-year-2017
Suliteanu, D. (n.d.). Fenty Beauty by Rihanna. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://www.lvmh.com/houses/perfumes-cosmetics/fenty-beauty-by-rihanna/
Digital Marketing Strategy Of Fenty Beauty. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2020, from http://alvomedia.com/news/digital-marketing-strategy-fenty-beauty-rihanna/