Updated October 23, 2026.
Beauty marketing campaigns that worked gave customers something to repeat, wear or share, not just something to watch. L'Oréal's slogan from 1973 is still in use, Dove's 2013 film won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, and e.l.f.'s 2019 TikTok challenge passed 1 billion views within a week, according to the company. Five campaigns below show what each built and what a brand can copy.
Which beauty marketing campaigns worked, and why?
Five beauty campaigns from 1973 to 2019 worked because each one handed customers a concrete thing to say, share or perform. The table lists what each campaign built and the lesson a brand can reuse.
| Campaign | Year | What it built | Repeatable lesson |
|---|
| L'Oréal Paris, "Because I'm Worth It" | 1973 | A slogan the brand still uses | Write the line from the customer's point of view |
| Dove, Real Beauty Sketches | 2013 | Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions | Build the film on one research finding |
| Kylie Cosmetics, Lip Kits | 2015 to 2019 | A $600 million deal for 51% of the company | Use the founder's own audience as the shelf |
| Fenty Beauty, Pro Filt'r foundation | 2017 | 40 foundation shades at launch | Make the product range the message |
| e.l.f. Cosmetics, #eyeslipsface | 2019 | Over 1 billion TikTok views, per the company | Commission something people can perform |
How did L'Oréal's "Because I'm Worth It" last 50 years?
L'Oréal Paris has used "Because I'm Worth It" since 1973, when McCann Erickson copywriter Ilon Specht wrote the line for the brand's Préférence hair color. According to Fast Company, the original ad was a single shot of a woman walking toward the camera and explaining why she likes the product and how it makes her feel.
The line lasted because it speaks from the customer's side. A slogan that states what the buyer believes about herself stays usable long after the product it launched with changes.
What made Dove's Real Beauty Sketches win at Cannes?
Dove's Real Beauty Sketches, made by Ogilvy Brasil, won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in 2013. MediaPost reported that the film started from a research finding that only 4% of women call themselves beautiful.
The film then had an FBI-trained sketch artist draw each woman twice, once from her own description and once from a stranger's. The comparison turned a statistic into a scene viewers could watch and forward. The lesson for a brand is to pick one finding it can prove and build the whole piece around it.
How did Kylie Cosmetics turn lip kits into a $600 million deal?
Kylie Jenner launched Kylie Lip Kits in 2015, and in November 2019 Coty agreed to pay $600 million for 51% of Kylie Cosmetics, a deal that valued the company at about $1.2 billion, according to the Associated Press. Coty said the business brought in about $177 million in revenue over the previous year, up 40%.
The Associated Press noted that Jenner built the brand by promoting her products to her own social media followers. The founder's channel did the work a retail launch budget normally does. The risk is dependence: a brand built this way is only as strong as the founder's audience.
Why did Fenty Beauty's 40 shades change the category?
Fenty Beauty launched in September 2017 with Pro Filt'r foundation in 40 shades, and Time named the brand one of its 25 Best Inventions of 2017, according to Cosmetics Business. In 2025, Time added Pro Filt'r to its Best Inventions Hall of Fame, as Cosmetics Business also reported.
The shade range was the campaign. Customers could test the claim by looking for their own shade, which made the message checkable in the store. When the product itself proves the promise, the advertising has less to explain.
How did e.l.f.'s TikTok challenge reach 1 billion views?
e.l.f. Cosmetics launched #eyeslipsface on TikTok on October 4, 2019, and a week later reported more than 1 billion views and over 400,000 participant videos. The company said in its launch announcement that it was the first brand to create original music for a TikTok hashtag challenge.
The creative agency Movers+Shakers worked with songwriter iLL Wayno and artist Holla FyeSixWun on the track, which e.l.f. later extended into a full song, per the company's follow-up release. The song gave users a routine to perform, so the audience produced the ads. The trade-off is platform risk, since the campaign only works while the audience stays on that app.
How should a beauty brand choose which campaign model to copy?
A beauty brand should copy the model that matches the asset it already owns: a premium price, a research finding, a founder audience, a product range or a platform audience. The table below is an editorial reading of the five cases above, not a ranking.
| Option | When to use | Trade-off |
|---|
| Customer-voice slogan (L'Oréal) | The brand sells at a premium and needs a reason to justify it | Pays back over years, not quarters |
| Research-led film (Dove) | The brand owns a consumer finding it can prove | Needs distribution across many markets to matter |
| Founder channel (Kylie) | The founder already has a large, active audience | Value depends on one person's reach |
| Range-led launch (Fenty) | Competitors serve a narrow part of the customer base | Needs inventory and supply to back the promise |
| Platform challenge (e.l.f.) | The target customer already spends time on one app | Results depend on that platform's rules and algorithm |
What should a beauty brand do next?
Pick the one asset the brand already owns, such as a provable finding, a founder audience or a product range, and build a single repeatable action around it before spending on reach. For customer-voice cases such as the 2012 Bobbi Brown and MAC Facebook shade votes, read the beauty brand customer-voice case studies. To see who runs beauty marketing at the biggest houses today, read who the top beauty CMOs are in 2026. For deeper reading, see EPR's beauty PR coverage, the Beauty Citation Share Index and the best beauty PR agencies.
