A highlight on the MAC marketing calendar is National Lipstick Day, where the brand – most known for its iconic lip products – consistently elevates its celebrations with groundbreaking and disruptive initiatives.
With a strategic focus on recruiting the younger generation, MAC set out to use National Lipstick Day as a moment in time to appeal to Gen Z and young millennials. But we had freshen up the approach. Firstly, lipstick as a format is not the go-to of younger generations like it is for longtime loyal MAC fans. Gen Z and young millennials increasingly prefer lip glosses and balms.
Second, they favor layering multiple lip products for the perfect lip look. It’s not just about the lipstick but the way they style a lip. While the layering trend is popular, we also see that gatekeeping your lip combo is not. Beauty influencers are constantly showing how recreate their lip look and fans are buying it up to try on themselves.
These insights led us to flip the script on National Lipstick Day by bundling multiple lip products, including lipstick, together with the help of a few star-studded friends.
And because we wanted to own the National Lipstick Day conversation and drive earned media buzz measured through EMV, we knew we needed some powerful friends who could galvanize their fanbase to act, buy and share.
A pioneer in the realm of collections and collaborations, MAC has set the industry standard by partnering with icons across music, film, art, and entertainment for decades – so this year’s collaboration was written in the stars. We know from experience that collaborating with image-makers, it-girls, and lip product gurus generates significant buzz. They help the brand recruit young, sell out and earn attention. It’s not just the MAC lip combo they create, but their signature style, devoted fan base and appeal that leads to success.
We were challenged to find a way to reanimate hero MAC Lip products and work within a concept that had already been successful the previous year. In 2023, the National Lipstick Day campaign focused on high-profile beauty creators including Cindy Kimberly, Jodie Woods and Alissa Ashley, who were well-known within the beauty community but lacked reach in other influential spaces. For our sophomore season, we identified the need to cast a more diverse roster of both endemic and non-endemic talent to broaden the campaign’s impact and make it feel new and different for consumers. The casting of this year’s headliners was the biggest undertaking and scouring the extensive MAC fan base and choosing a short list of only three was a grueling but pivotal task. This year, we teamed up with Gabbriette, Ryan Destiny, and Karen Gonzalez who each offered unique appeal to Gen Z. Karen represented the traditional beauty influencer, while Gabbriette, a model and musician, and Ryan, an actress and singer, were chosen for their pop culture influence and celebrity status. Each collaborator curated their very own MAC lip combo and self-shoot all campaign assets that MAC later used to create in-store displays, brand.com product pages, digital assets and email blasts.
When were ready to launch, we turned over the reins to Gabbriette, Ryan and Karen who revealed their MAC lip combo on their socials. Having your own MAC lip combo has become somewhat of a status symbol in pop culture and their fan bases recognized this – followers and their notable friends immediately popped up in the comments celebrating the partnership and their intent to add to cart.
From there, we sustained buzz through product seeding to the beauty creator community as well as the their targeted lists. We saw instant pick up, as creators tried the lip combos and showed how it looked on them. We also lucked out that CharliXCX deemed it a brat summer, and Gabbriette’s affiliation with her – and inclusion in a song – ignited social sharing using the audio on TikTok. On Ryan’s part, this collaboration was her first in beauty and Black women were quick to take note and join in to support her.
Since the headliners had a strong online presence, we leaned into that with a heavy owned social strategy that showcased lip combo unboxings, lip combo swatches, applications by MAC Artists and content the collaborators made just for MAC.
Distribution was national in store and online MAC and our retail partners.
The campaign delivered exceptional results across all aspects of our 360 activation.
PR and influencer efforts were particularly successful, with collaborator posts generating $2.9M in EMV—up 55% from FY24 partners—and producing 68% more content than the previous year, showing just how engaged they were in the partnership.
Their celebrity network was also engaged with Charli XCX, Chloe Bailey, Kaia Gerber, Jordyn Woods, Amelia Gray and others dropping comments on their content.
Total campaign EMV reached $10.4M, a 69% increase from FY24 and MAC was #5 on the Tribe Top 10 Leaderboard in July 2024. Media coverage was strong too, with articles generating 11.7M impressions and $34K MIV.
Sales were robust with Gabbriette and Ryan’s kits seeing complete sell-through by week 2. Beyond selling out, the campaign achieved its goal of recruiting new consumers with 57% of buyers being new to MAC. Those who purchased the kits over-indexed in Gen Z and Millennials compared to other age groups.
Social media saw record-breaking metrics, with 2.51M organic video views and 186K total engagements on content surrounding the lip kits on @maccosmeticsusa. Content featuring collaborators were of our top engaged posts, performing above average at 7.55% on Instagram (+35%) and .8% on TikTok (+19%).
