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August 2021 Beauty Collabs: 4 Influencer Collaborations That Work & Why

Aug 31, 2021

Inspiration For Your Next Beauty Influencer Collaboration

Join us for another investigation of beauty brands who are producing the most interesting and successful beauty influencer collaborations! This month we focused on the various ways to strengthen relationships with influencer partners. 

  • Brands featured: Rare Beauty, ColourPop Cosmetics, Laura Mercier, and Anastasia Beverly Hills.
  • Key learnings: You can strengthen influencer relationships by utilizing social listening, and being open to honest feedback - it also helps to look for unique/unconventional partners and to always strive to build long-lasting partnerships. 

For more in-depth beauty trends and influencer campaign breakdowns, subscribe to our monthly Beauty Newsletter

Rare Beauty 

Best beauty influencer collaboration: Alessandro (@mualesandro)*

  • High engagement
  • Quality content

What makes it work?

  • Great social listening. The ability to identify and partner with someone who is creating great organic content with high engagement is every influencer marketer’s dream. Rare Beauty seems to be able to do this particularly well. For example, Alessandro made a hilarious call out parody video that topped the engagement charts at the beginning of May - a little over a week later Alessandro announced the brand sent him some free products to try! 
  • Building deep connections. To take it one step further, Selena dueted Alessandro’s video that not only made his day but built an instant connection with Alessandro and his audience through real engagement. It was a win-win for Rare Beauty - nurture organic love and also help uplift a diverse, POC influencer who is an emerging voice in the beauty community.

*Insight: According to the data, Alessandro might be a rising beauty influencer! Our research shows that not only has his audience size increased by 29%, but engagements with his content have also gone up by 4% over the past four weeks. It appears that brands are taking notice - he’s done a lot of great partnerships, including one with e.l.f. that we highlighted in our June collabs post.

ColourPop Cosmetics

Best beauty influencer collaboration: Julian Burzynski (@juliancookies)

  • High engagement 
  • Quality content 
  • Great storytelling

What makes it work?

  • Unconventional partner. Recently, we’ve seen beauty brands gain success by leveraging unique influencers outside the traditional beauty and skincare sphere. This rings true for ColourPop Cosmetics who partnered with Julian Burzynski for the launch of the Powerpuff Girls X ColourPop collection. Julian, known for his comedic lip sync videos of famous TV and movie scenes, went far beyond a traditional unboxing reveal. Instead, he reenacted the famous intro scene of the Powerpuff Girls, creating a fun and engaging way for his audience to learn about the products and get into their fun, bright colors! ColourPop’s comment on Julian’s video sums up this collab perfectly - “you just won the internet 👏👏👏👏.” 

Laura Mercier 

Best beauty influencer collaboration: Karen Sarahi Gonzalez (@iluvsarahii)

  • High engagement 
  • Quality Content

What makes it work? 

  • Partnerships that last. Karen, a long-standing partner of Laura Mercier, continues to be a top performer for Laura Mercier providing an average of 1K VIT* for the brand every month. What’s the magic in keeping these long-lasting partnerships? Nurturing partners who truly love your brand. One of the ways Laura Mercier keeps their influencer roster engaged is producing beautiful influencer trips, creating unlimited opportunities for creators to post about their #merciermoments.  

*VIT stands for Brand Vitality Score. You can check your brand’s VIT score, and how it ranks against competitors here

Anastasia Beverly Hills 

Best beauty influencer collaboration: Mikayla Nogueira (@mikaylanogueira)

  • High engagement 
  • Quality Content 

What makes it work? 

  • Honest reviews. As beauty brands are starting to become more comfortable with TikTok, we are now seeing a formula pop up for product launches. The ingredients include: the product, a theme (dance, challenge, etc.), an original song, and a branded hashtag. Anastasia Beverly Hills utilized all of these ingredients for their new Magic Touch concealer; however, the brand’s partnership with Mikayla is what really stands out. Mikayla provides an in-depth TikTok review of the concealer’s “gorgeous” coverage. Her audience gets a chance to see how the product applies, the coverage it offers, and how it interacts with other products. Not only do they get to experience this try-on alongside Mikayla, but they get to hear her very positive, unfiltered thoughts about the product from start to finish. This partnership garnered more engagements than any other collaboration for this product launch.