eos launched into its newest category - body moisturizer - at a challenging time to introduce a new product, the height of the pandemic. Since then, with lean resources but a great product, the team has used scrappy marketing tactics focused solely on social media and creators to grow awareness and a cult following among women on TikTok. Thanks to those devoted fans, the eos lotion business has been steadily growing, selling ten bottles every single minute for the past six months. But it was still flying under the radar nationally....well, no more.
eos lotion reached new levels of demand after guys started spreading the word with viral TikTok posts that were totally organic, totally not sponsored by eos. The frenzy among men for eos’ body lotion was started by TikTok user @kevin.preston.white, whose original post was viewed 2.4M, and sparked countless stitches with men trying out the product for themselves.
Not surprisingly, the women weren't having it; they posted their own irate, viral reaction videos expressing concerns that the hype would lead to a retail shortage.
So how could eos use this unexpected viral moment to fuel more momentum for their growing lotion business?
The idea was to listen to our fans and react with lightning speed. In multiple TikToks, dozens of women were already telling us exactly what they wanted: to keep the men's hands off of their eos lotion.
We concepted and design the eos Lotion Lock to protect women everywhere from the insidious eos lotion stealing agendas of their partners, friends and housemates. It's a lock that attaches to the neck of the lotion bottle, and protects the precious contents with a highly sophisticated (and still being engineered) combination of numbers, letters, and emojis. With enough interest, eos committed to investing in the R&D required, but in the meantime, the lock concept itself could keep the conversation going.
The Lotion Lock campaign debuted in mid December as organic social media content, paid social media ads, and a call to action to sign up to our loyalty program to learn more about the lock's engineering progress. Those who signed up would receive a free lotion to tide them over until the lock was ready for prime time.
In addition, we secured several of the original TikTokers - most notably, @kevin.preston.white and @jessyk078 - to capture their reaction to the Lotion Lock and share the campaign to their audiences. @kevin.preston.white conducted a product giveaway so he could make amends with the women he ticked off.
Our fans were delighted:
-- "THIS IS SO SMART STOP" - Christina★
-- "Run me the lock!" - CatchDeaIfYouCan
-- "no cus my sister keeps stealing it all 😂 i NEED THE LOCK" - meli
The campaign's engagement metrics were hugely successful, with a nearly 3X clickthrough rate versus benchmark and +28% view-through rate on creator content versus benchmark.
Most importantly, business growth accelerated. While eos lotion had already been growing prior to Lotion Lock, sales grew over 2X faster during the campaign period vs the average growth rate in 2023. eos jumped to #1 best selling lotion on Amazon, and cracked into top 10 brands nationally.
eos believes that the most authentic and powerful marketing is centered on community engagement. Our recipe for success in recent years has been to listen to our fans and react accordingly and with lightning speed, so we are part of the conversation in a way that provides authentic value. It's how we can ensure our brand story resonates with our audience. Lotion Lock demonstrated that eos is listening, that we empathize, and that brands can have a sense of humor.
