NARS Cosmetics has long been known for their edgy, creative-first approach to social. However, as the beauty space exploded with new influencers, brands, and content, their historical approach to social media wasn’t as effective. With limited budget, we needed to find a creative way to build momentum for their core lip pencils.

The

Challenge

NARS challenged JD to help grow sales of their core product line of lip pencils (Velvet Matte Lip Pencils or VMLP) while simultaneously creating brand awareness and reinforcing their leadership in the lip category. To create newness around a legacy product, NARS and JD formulated a paid strategy that would imitate a viral campaign that earned 5X the earned value of spend and grew sales by nearly 50% YoY.

In order to accomplish a viral nature, hand-picked 42 different influencers to create content on our behalf. We precisely timed posts by influencers such as Disney star Dove Cameron (16.2mm followers) and travel blogger Nicole Issacs (204k followers) to go live one at a time each day over a 30 day period to create broad exposure and a “viral” nature. We then supported the effort by launching paid content around the “lip pencil every influencer is talking about right now.” And in one final step, we then distributed the article through native placements to further extend the reach. The combination of influencer content + long form content + distribution built a moment that truly felt and performed like a viral campaign and the results were extraordinary.


The

Results

Over achieving all success metrics, the initial Instagram campaign and subsequent custom content led to a highly targeted and engaged audience for an extremely efficient spend.

  • Drove EMV 5x greater than spend (including distribution rights)
  • 164k page views of custom content § 1.83% CTR of custom content
  • 0.51% CTR of custom content amplification (5x average)
  • CPE of $.13 outperforming goal of $.45) by nearly 3x

“NARS was looking to support one of its iconic lip products in an innovative way to break through the clutter of the lip category. By partnering with January Digital, we were able to collaborate and devise a solution that ultimately allowed us to achieve results beyond our initial goals. Together, we created a buzzworthy program that allowed us to align the right influencers with our desired audience and generate extremely strong results!”
- Alexandra Dennett, NARS Digital Manager

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