The past week has been packed with exciting developments in the D2C Skincare industry, from major brand collaborations to innovative product launches. Research powered by Brand Radar - start tracking your competitors.
💡 The Big Picture: Skincare E-commerce Winners & Losers
Welcome to November's report on the skincare e-commerce landscape. We analyzed numerous prominent brands and over 10,000 ad creatives to separate the winning strategies from the losing ones.
The overarching trend this period? The Ascension of "Masstige" and the decline of prestige marketing.
In the US, mass beauty sales grew at twice the rate of prestige beauty. Mass sales jumped 4% to reach $34.6 billion, while prestige sales rose only 2% to $16.0 billion. This performance is indicative of a consumer "focused on efficacy and elevated value".
Here’s the breakdown.
🏆 Winner: e.l.f. Beauty – Mastering Cultural Velocity
This month, e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE: ELF) exemplifies the "Masstige" winner. The brand, which built its success on "accessible beauty" and "hero products" like the Camo Concealer, demonstrated an unparalleled mastery of cultural velocity.
What They Did: e.l.f. Cosmetics became the first skincare/beauty brand ever to launch a new, shoppable in-stream element on Twitch, powered by Amazon Ads.
Why It Worked: This approach is a "blue ocean" flank move. While competitors fight for dominance on the saturated TikTok Shop platform, e.l.f. is moving to a channel (live-stream gaming) with a massive, highly engaged, and historically underserved demographic.
Key Metric: e.l.f. Beauty’s channel, e.l.f.YOU! on Twitch has become a top-performing channel: 43.3M+ Minutes Watched; 800k+ Chat Messages; 64,400+ Minutes Streamed.
The Takeaway: The Channel is the Strategy; The Funnel is Dead. Consumers, led by Gen Z, now discover, consider, and purchase in a single collapsed funnel on social platforms.
A possible new frontier for beauty e-commerce?
📉 Loser: The Estée Lauder Companies – A Legacy Giant's Pivot
The Estée Lauder Companies is the definitive case study of the "Legacy Value" crisis. This systemic failure is visible across its core portfolio. Skin Care net sales (its largest category) have been down, driven by declines from Estée Lauder and La Mer.
What They Did: "Beauty Reimagined" is the company's new restoration plan to "restore organic sales growth". ELC’s "green shoots" of a turnaround and, more importantly, unveiled a new strategic direction. An earnings report released on Oct 30 report revealed that this plan is working only where ELC behaves like a "Winner." The growth was not from its legacy namesake brands.
Key Metric: Highlights from their report showed key growth in a few areas:
Fragrance: Net sales rose 14%, driven by its cult "niche" brands Le Labo and Tom Ford.
"Masstige": Mid-single-digit growth from The Ordinary, which ELC is now wisely expanding into new channels like Amazon's Premium Beauty store.
China Rebound: A 9% sales surge in mainland China was driven not by the old Estée Lauder brand, but by "strong performances from La Mer, Le Labo, and Tom Ford".
The Takeaway: Agility is Your Most Valuable Asset. You cannot win by optimizing the old model.
🔬 Ad Analysis: Top 3 DTC Ads by Hook & Landing Page
Here are the top-performing ads that crossed our desk, broken down by their hook and the landing page pattern that sealed the deal.
1. 100% PURE - Sprouts Retail Partnership
Winning Landing Page:
Pattern: Strategic Retail Partnership: Announcing the brand's availability at over 400 Sprouts Farmers Market locations, emphasizing convenience and accessibility for customers.
Value Alignment: Positioning the brand alongside Sprouts' reputation for "clean living" and wellness, targeting "savvy, label-reading" consumers who prioritize natural, non-toxic, and cruelty-free products.
2. Cocokind - Ceramide lip blur balm that you won’t lose
Winning Hook:
Pattern: A quick to-the-point hook of setting up an intriguing promise: that this product is the world’s first lip balm that they will not lose.
In Action: The ad's primary focus is on the unique product feature—the keychain ring cap—and its direct benefit of preventing the user from losing their lip balm—are keenly shown off throughout the short video ad.
The ad immediately highlights the product’s unique quirk.
3. Tula - Find your 'Spresso match
Winning Landing Page:
Pattern: A quiz landing page featuring their ‘Spresso energizing eye balm, breaking away from their usual pattern of product landing pages.
Capture Leads: Highly engaged users aren’t lost after the quiz is over, they enter their emails and enter the email marketing funnel.
The Zero-Party Data Goldmine: Instead of guessing, just try asking. Quizzes like this get customers to willingly hand over their deepest preferences, pain points, and needs.
💯 Top-Performing Organic Posts
1️⃣ Rhode Skin - Halloween dress-up
Engagement: 107.5K Likes, 313 Comments
Strategy: A simple but effective take on their on-the-go cream blush, taking advantage of the season to drive some engagement.
Sometimes simple is best.
2️⃣ Glossier - Sephora Savings Event
Engagement: 9.9K Likes, 34 Comments
Strategy: Leveraging a sales event with Sephora, this stylish sticker-filled post entices viewers with Beauty Insider status.
Commenters were highly engaged by the stickers.
3️⃣ Cocokind - Our community ft. Ceramide Lip Blur Balm!
Engagement: 2188 Likes
Strategy: Featuring Cocokind’s community members in a photoshoot with their new product to generate grassroots interest.
✔ Thanks for reading!
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