Our top ten health and beauty digital campaigns

That is not to say that having a digital presence automatically means doing it right, because, let’s face it: not being online is practically the equivalent of commercial suicide. So what can brands do to stand out?

Let’s take a look at some of the most brilliant health and beauty campaigns that we’ve come across.

Frank Body

This quirky Australian brand mastered the language of social media right from the start. Capitalising on the weirdness of their product – a coffee-based body scrub – they created a unique, mostly user-generated Instagram feed full of faces speckled with coffee.

Frank Body shipped hundreds of thousands of sample products pre-launch to micro-influencers across Australia, eventually expanding this to other parts of the world.

Influencers were given exclusive samples and were asked to give their feedback to make it better and to share user-generated content to grow brand awareness.

This pre-launch release had people eager to get their hands on the product and once launched for sale, the results were phenomenal.

Thousands of user-generated posts with the hashtag #TheFrankEffect were all over Instagram from customers around the world.

The brand’s focus on Instagram was one of the first influencer campaigns to ever be successfully conducted. They managed to turn their client base into a community and transformed Frank Body into a lifestyle.

Targeting young women, or ‘babes’, their feed is now a mixture of pink, glitter, makeup-less selfies, quirky accessories and, above all, women living and loving life.

Because making babes feel like babes, that’s what they’re all about.

Glossier

New York City-based beauty company, Glossier welcomes customers to join their people-powered beauty ecosystem. Thanks to user-generated content, that’s exactly what the brand has created.

By engaging with micro-influencers, Glossier transformed their fresh and clean Instagram aesthetic into a template for beauty influencers everywhere.

Social media success managed to expand this brand of only twenty-four products to the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. Now, that’s impressive!

Birchbox

Companies big and small are discovering the marketing opportunities behind blogging. Developing consistent and high-quality content is an easy way to drive traffic to a website and promote consumer engagement in the digital world.

Birchbox Magazine publishes beauty focused content that simultaneously attracts cosmetic enthusiasts to the website while increasing interest in monthly subscriptions.

Here’s the trick, online content is free, however, a subscription unlocks five monthly customized beauty treats. Owned media allows Birchbox to reach potential customers through free blog shares on social media. Each month, the style of online content mimics the theme of the next box to build anticipation.

This month, Forbes reported Birchbox was one of top five subscription sites in 2018, with more than 1 million subscribers and 4 million customers in total.

Lush Cosmetics

This next company bridged the gap between cosmetics and environmental activism to create an unforgettable digital campaign. Lush Cosmetics partnered with Fin Free and took to social media to use their platform to shine a light on a serious, yet often unknown environment crisis.

Lush is popular for its stance against animal testing, ethical buying, and 100% vegetarian and homemade products. In efforts to support World Oceans Day, Lush launched a limited edition Shark Fin Soap and donated 100% of the proceeds to Fin Free.

The call to action of this campaign encouraged followers to educate themselves on illegal shark fishing, sign a petition, and donate.

Beauty with a purpose!

Unilever

How to dominate hair care on YouTube: ask a number of influential vloggers to record hair tutorials in which they simultaneously target popular search terms and subtly promote your hair products.

This simple yet brilliant idea was executed by Unilever, who united all its hair care brands and created All Things Hair, a YouTube channel where beauty fans can resolve all their hair related queries by watching high-quality video tutorials.

Other than fully optimising website content for SEO, Unilever also uses big data to ensure their content quickly responds to upcoming trends and search terms.

Unilever is now the third biggest player in the global hair care market. We’re impressed

Always

Femine hygiene brand Always has set out to defeat fear of failure in young women during puberty. Their campaign spans across all social media platforms, featuring podcasts and global outreach projects. #LikeAGirl encourages the 49% of girls during puberty who fear failure to build confidence and keep going.

Girls are able to visit the brand’s online platforms to find weekly content including personal stories along with life advice and tips.

By mastering the advantages of social media, Always has transcended its brand from simply a pad brand to an everyday resource for girls all over the world.

Dollar Shave Club

The name of this brand alone implies that something rather quirky is going on here, and a cheeky look at their website will immediately confirm that.

For a brand that sells shaver sets, they look effortlessly cool in everything they do, which is exactly why their digital marketing strategy is so incredibly successful.

The brand has developed a long-term commitment to video following the success of their 2012 YouTube video “Our Blades Are F****** Great!”.

The campaign brought in 12,000 customers for the subscription razor service within the first two days. How? They understand the value of tone of voice.

Creating young, smart, stylish, and playful messaging Dollar Shave Club knew how to reach their target consumers, Today, becoming a member of the Dollar Shave Club means becoming one of them.

Or in other words: a witty, carefree, well-groomed and always shaven gentleman. And who wouldn’t want that, even if it meant signing up for a monthly membership?

Orabrush

Making tongue care an appealing topic is difficult enough, let alone trying to do that in the online world, where the average concentration span is about 10 seconds.

Orabrush did it anyway, with the Diary of a Dirty Tongue. 90% of bad breath comes from a dirty tongue, and thus through this diary, which came out almost 7 years ago as something we would now call a vlog, Orabrush sought to educate the public.

In doing so, they saw potential in a social channel, YouTube, that other brands hadn’t yet wrapped their heads around, which is what social media marketing is virtually all about.

Read more at Campaign

Team Novo Nordisk

As one of the best performing Instagram accounts in healthcare, Team Novo Nordisk, certainly deserves a spot on this list.

The global all-diabetes sports team of cyclists, triathletes and runners is immensely popular and has set in motion a proper movement.

Their Instagram page is nothing but a showcase of their success, including lots of action photos, backstage peeks and inspiring messages.

When the cause you’re looking to promote (diabetes and other chronic conditions in this case) is surrounded by community love and team spirit, it seems as though suddenly, everyone is listening.

HelloFlo

Aiming to make having your period more fun, HelloFlo offers care packages to help women and girls through that particular time of the month.

As part of their mission they’re seeking to break the taboo around menstruation, and their spot-on YouTube ad ‘A Visit From Aunt Flo’ serves its purpose.

Highlighting the various stages of womanhood, from a young girl who’s desperately waiting for ‘Aunt Flo’ to a middle-aged woman waving her goodbye, the video light-heartedly picks up on the conversation around women’s bodies, ultimately seeking to normalise it.

Back in 2013, founder Naama Bloom had about 40 subscribers to her monthly care packages.

She uploaded HelloFlo’s first video ad Camp Gyno to YouTube and immediately it went viral. Within weeks, thousands of women started asking Bloom for a wider variety of products through the post.

Bloom then struck up a partnership with Always, which sponsored a second video, First Moon Party which has over 40 million views to date, and she hasn’t looked back.

Summary

So there you have it, a selection of the campaigns which our social media management London team enjoyed watching grow.

What did you think?  Did we miss any that you were particularly fond of?  Let us know your thoughts…