As pioneers in the skin positivity movement, we've always been committed to marketing our innovative, first-to-market skincare products in a transparent and inclusive manner. We live by our founding principle of striving for skin positivity, not in skin perfection. We celebrate all skin types & concerns, from acneic to aging, by developing products that help our community make peace with their skin and by creating fun, uplifting and empowering messages around them.
In 2020, we released our first topical, non-patch product, Acne Serum. When the time came to ideate a concept for the launch campaign of Peace Out Acne Serum, Founder and CEO Enrico Frezza drew inspiration from his own struggle with adult acne and its impact on his self-esteem. Could Peace Out create a campaign whose message embraced skin-positivity and championed those fighting acne without shame?
Instead of casting models for this photo shoot, we turned to our customer database and selected 25 acne-suffering candidates for a “before & after” trial to test the power of this innovative product. Last summer, we planned to invite participants to a photo shoot in San Francisco to capture raw, unfiltered, unretouched photos and videos of their skin improvements which would then be shared across Peace Out’s social and digital channels as the campaign for Acne Serum. When the pandemic hit, we had to pivot and get creative because shooting this campaign on location was no longer a safe option.
When we realized shooting the campaign for our new Acne Serum in person wasn’t happening, we had to figure out how to show consumers the results of using Acne Serum. Once our participants used the product for two weeks and took “before” selfies, we arranged Zoom photo shoots with our in-house art director. This time, the screen replaced the camera lens as we virtually sat down with each participant to capture “after” photos and videos of their dramatic results using Peace Out Acne Serum. In addition to the images, we had each “skin champion” relay their inspiring personal skincare journey via screen shot.
We debuted “Acne, Unfiltered” – the first-ever beauty campaign to be shot on Zoom (or any other video conferencing platform) – on July 10, 2020 with teaser Instagram posts before going live on July 14, 2020 across all our social channels, blog, customer emails, paid social media, display ads and more. Before and after images of our subjects’ striking transformations were accompanied by messaging in our signature acne-positive, inclusive, fun and informative voice. We also decided to highlight our brave participants’ raw, unfiltered thoughts on their struggles and breakthroughs dealing with acne by creating a docuseries specifically for IGTV and YouTube, to give each participant their own moment to tell their story.
“Acne, Unfiltered” generated a buzzy and successful launch of Peace Out Acne Serum despite the challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. We drove engagement by sharing meaningful conversations with our audience surrounding acne positivity.
The results greatly surpassed our expectations.
Sales for Acne Serum were 9% of our total business for both July and August and ranked in the top 5 SKUs
To date, “Acne, Unfiltered” ranks in the top ten campaigns for the entire year across all our social channels and significantly boosted engagement
Sephora, our exclusive retail partner, named the launch of Peace Out Acne Serum as one of the top launches during the pandemic.
Community members that participated in this campaign are still key partners for us within the acne category and continue across our social platforms and Sephora's channels.
The positive outcomes of this campaign aren’t only measured by the numbers, because we also built our community of #skinchamps – a space in which we use our voice within the skincare industry to share, support and positively promote our community’s experiences with acne in the hopes of empowering and teaching each other to be confident in our own skin.
