2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Sephora has been steadily growing faster than competition with double digit growth in terms of sales and volumes, however awareness levels still needed to be strengthened in UAE/KSA and Sephora's uniqueness needed to be established among consumers. With the rising efforts of the competition in our priority markets in 2015, Sephora needed to build loyalty with its consumers and establish itself as the preferred retailer and beauty brand of choice. Interest in beauty online is vast with 170 million interests on Facebook, >8 million beauty fans on Instagram, & +42% increase in GCC beauty searches in 2014. There is no shortage of English make-up videos featuring western models. However, Middle Eastern women were hungry for authentic and relevant beauty content that is not “Photoshoped” and which bought out their unique Arab beauty. Sephora decided to combine its expertise with the top beauty bloggers, to deliver relevant and applicable beauty content. Rather than use models, Sephora offered a unique experience with real fans at the forefront, by making them the stars of their own beauty journeys. Their experiences were recorded to serve as self-application tutorials to women with similar features. A call to action message was shared on Sephora's/influencer's social media, asking fans to identify their own beauty concerns and say why they should be chosen. The winners were then handpicked based on the requests & features that were relevant to the majority of Middle Eastern Women, & coupled with the beauty influencer of their choice. Influencers identified the fan's beauty concerns, then took them through Sephora stores to hand pick the products that would best suit their skins & the looks they wanted. The girls were given self-application recorded workshops, which allowed them to leave with some great beauty tips under their belt, & served as beauty tutorials for others.

The campaign achieved 2.176 Million views over a period of 1 month. Interest in the content was high with Facebook achieving 20% Engagement rate which is 10 times more than market benchmarks, 96% of which were positive comments around Sephora’s association with the influencers as well as love for Sephora. On Instagram, the account grew by 120% with 21,000 followers; 86% of which were directly recruited from the first post by the influencers which announced the campaign to fans. During the period of the campaign, love on Sephora’s Instagram account was apparent with 100% increase in hearts from our fans. Word of mouth from the campaign was extended to Twitter, where regardless of Sephora’s lack of presence on that platform, 910 tweets were registered of fans tweeting about our content & encouraging their friends to watch it. Interest in the products used within the tutorials was highlighted with +34% increase in product enquiry on Social media during the campaign period.