Born in Southern California in 1996, Urban Decay has been disrupting the industry’s sea of pink-dominated counters. Their mission: Badass, cruelty-free, high-performance makeup. Unsubscribe from beauty telling you to be pretty. Be whatever you want to be. PRETTY DIFFERENT. These are the words that the brand stands by to this day.
After initial success on TikTok, Urban Decay made the decision to go all in on the platform and reinvent beauty marketing on the world’s newest scaled social platform. Seeing the strong opportunities for beauty on TikTok, the objective was to identify how a beauty brand can build credibility and drive sales, to deliver short and long term value on the platform. Between February and July 2021 - Urban Decay partnered with Collab and activated six programs on TikTok.
One campaign, in particular, stood out from the rest. Urban Decay had secured the FIRST-EVER beauty collaboration with the Prince Estate (yes, that Prince), developing a limited edition make-up collection. Long-time agency partner Collab was tapped to produce a once-in-a-lifetime TikTok campaign that would help generate excitement and sell out the UD x Prince product on launch day.
Collab and UD recognized the obvious opportunity to tap into TikTok’s music culture to elevate this campaign, but it wasn’t enough to just activate some creators with Prince music in the background. Both UD and Collab shared a key perspective: to truly make this campaign come alive, it was more important to find creators from various verticals that had previously posted content about Prince and were genuine Prince fans. As opposed to other UD campaigns with Collab, this campaign would focus more on creators that could bring authentic passion, energy and creativity than one big-name talent. Collab used both proprietary tools and its team of TikTok strategy experts to scour the platform in search of the right talent for the campaign.
9 Prince fan creators were selected to paint TikTok purple with 17 posts to the backdrop of Prince’s song, “Let’s Go Crazy”. The campaign would unfold in 3 phases:
Phase I, The Product Tease: The legendary collaboration was announced on UD’s TikTok account, and activated creators shared how Prince continues to inspire them.
Phase II, The Product Reveal: Activated creators stitched UD’s TikTok video that revealed the collection for the first time.
Phase III, Let’s Go Crazy: Creators showed off the Prince palette during a magic transition, revealing a stunning look created by the collection, all to the soundtrack of “Let’s Go Crazy”.
Collab and Urban Decay worked together to edit portions of Prince’s hit song “Let’s Go Crazy” for creators to use during phase III. In order for content to not get flagged for copyright, Collab needed to ensure that creators tagged their video with the “Let’s Go Crazy” track in the TikTok library. The issue here was that the version created and the one in the platform’s library were two different snippets. The Collab team was able to find a quick fix, having creators tag the track from the TikTok library, then go into TikTok’s sound settings to turn down the tagged song while turning up their “original sound” - the track that had been edited together. By doing this, the phase III campaign content was kept free of any copyright flags.
Giving creators the flexibility to let their creativity run wild has always resulted in more authentic and impactful creative. This time, creators responded with expressive makeovers, outfit changes and quick-cut TikTok transitions that really channeled Prince’s unique energy. The creators were incredibly excited to be a part of this campaign and it showed. Quite a few creators decided to expand their posts to other platforms, leveraging additional engagement across their fan base.
Since a majority of creators were near the micro level and in a niche of their own, in-feed media was made a priority, in addition to the organic posts, so as to ensure reach and visibility across people’s For You pages.
Urban Decay has become one of the most loved and popular beauty brands on TikTok. From initial work with Charli D’Amelio to a fun and strategic approach to 2021, the brand has cracked the code of how to be a part of the community and grow their presence in a fun and effective way. The brand has become a real part of the TikTok culture, celebrated Black and LGBTQ members of their community, and worked with unexpected partners like the Prince Estate.
By all measures, the Urban Decay x Prince campaign was an overwhelming success. The Prince x UD line sold out in less than 24 hours. The campaign reached over 24.1M people, garnered over 14 million impressions and generated nearly a 1% CTR, one of the highest the Collab team has seen to date. The custom UDxPrince hashtag page also received over 16 million visits.
The average number of comments made on creator videos was in line with their overall average number of comments on non-branded videos (telling us the content produced for this campaign generated around the same level of engagement as non-sponsored posts). Creator organic views made up only 6% of the total views, showcasing how powerful the media campaign was during this activation. This campaign provided a great example of how Urban Decay and other brands could continue to work with creators who produce eye-catching content but aren’t considered mega-creators on the platform to generate real business impacts.
