Fenty Phenomenon
It is becoming increasingly apparent that a brand’s use of social media has a major impact on that brand’s health in terms of sales and positive brand association. Brands who fail to take full advantage of their social media presence may fail in terms of public brand opinion. One brand in particular that is a shining example of strong social media presence is Fenty Beauty, the cosmetics brand founded by Rihanna that has been taking the beauty world by storm. The brand promotes inclusivity across race and gender and this brand mission has been part of why the brand has gained a major following so quickly. The brand was only founded in 2017 and reportedly pulled in $100 million in sales in the first 40 days after their launch (Valentine). Clearly Rihanna is doing pretty well for herself. She has created an empire comprised of her music career and her forays into fashion and beauty. And part of why the brand has garnered so much success is their use of social media. Let’s dive into that a little more.
The Launch:
There’s no denying Rihanna has star power. Her name alone catches people’s attention. And this is partially why the brand had so much buzz even before the launch. RiRi is creating a makeup brand? The bad gyal RiRi! Iconic. Her notoriety was what brought the hype in the first place. The launch party for Fenty Beauty was held in a warehouse in Brooklyn, NY — attended by beauty editors for major publications as well as major social media influencers such as Jeffree Star, Manny MUA, Jackie Aina and many more (Saltzman). Inviting influencers to a launch party is common practice in the beauty industry and with good reason. Jeffree Star currently has 9.3 million Instagram followers, Manny MUA 4.7 million and Jackie Aina 1.1 million. By inviting influencers to come by, swan around, test out the products and promote the brand on their social media accounts, millions of eyes are exposed to the brand.
Another important point to this launch event was to emphasize the brand’s mission of inclusivity. At the launch, the brand dropped a foundation in a whopping 40 shades. For a new makeup brand just starting out, this is unheard of. Many major beauty brands don’t even come close to having this many shades. Luxury brand Dior only has 17 shades in their Airflash Foundation and their darkest shade doesn’t even come close. This decision to launch so many shades in their range, Fenty sparked hype across social media as well as changing the industry standards. In 2018, if a brand launches a product that is not inclusive of all skin tones (i.e. Beauty Blender, shown below) the company will likely be compared to Fenty and be shamed for not being more inclusive.
Fenty also made a point to use diverse models in their promotional materials leading up to the launch. This shouldn’t be seen as groundbreaking, but sadly it is. The push that Fenty is making towards a more inclusive industry is seriously huge.
Another thing Fenty does exceedingly well is the Instagram product tease. While the teasing videos from the launch have since been removed from the Fenty Instagram, the cinematic style and high production value of their teaser trailers can been seen in the trailer for Fenty’s Mattemoiselle lipsticks.
To me this trailer is reminiscent of an Apple ad, suggesting that Fenty is wanting to associate themselves as being a high end and sleek brand such as Apple. The teaser is also high energy, making use of dancehall inspired music and fast paced editing to build excitement in the viewer. Fenty uses videos such as these on their Instagram and Youtube in order to get their followers hyped up about upcoming product launches. And because of the initial success with the brand’s launch, people are hungry for more Fenty.
Room for improvement?
In terms of social media presence, at first glance Fenty is doing everything right. The brand currently has 5.7 million Instagram followers, over 500k page likes on Facebook, almost 400k followers on Youtube and about 300k followers on Twitter. However it is clear that Instagram is the main source of social media engagement for Fenty Beauty. I believe that focusing their efforts on Instagram is a good move, as it is an image based platform and this is a makeup brand. The visuals are everything.
Let’s dive into Fenty’s Instagram a little. While the brand has 5.7 million followers, posts are getting (on average) about 100k likes with some posts having much more likes and some much less. The posts that perform the best in terms of likes are either posts of makeup looks on a model’s face or product pictures. Looking at engagement in terms of comments, posts usually range between 100–600 comments, with the odd post (usually featuring Rihanna) receiving thousands of comments. If we’re looking at engagement through likes, only about 1.75% of Fenty’s potential audience are liking the content on their Instagram.
There could be any number of reasons why Fenty’s followers are not engaging with their posts, ranging from buying followers to not posting the type of content followers want to see. What I believe Fenty could do to improve their engagement is to decrease post frequency. By going for quality of quantity, Fenty won’t be flooding their follower’s feeds with content. I believe Fenty is making their content too much of the same which is boring their followers. Being more selective with their posts will attract more quality followers.
How do they compare?
As an example of Fenty’s success, I am going to compare Fenty’s Instagram presence compared to another major comparable brand in the beauty industry — Kylie Cosmetics.
Kylie Cosmetics:
Kylie Cosmetics is definitely winning in terms of followers — with 18.2 million followers. This is likely due to the celebrity status of the company founder, but then again Fenty is also founded by a celebrity. However, Fenty is not called Rihanna Cosmetics so that may have something to do with the discrepancy. Almost every post on the Kylie Instagram have over 100k likes so they also surpass Rihanna in that sense.
On the other hand, are number all that matter? Are these quality followers? There has been much speculation about Kylie buying followers but this is difficult to prove. Fenty Beauty sales in their first month of operation were 5 times higher than Kylie Cosmetics (Marsh). Additionally, Kylie has been declining in the court of public opinion for a while now, with many beauty bloggers on Youtube criticizing Kylie’s product, while it seems Fenty can do no wrong. It may be the case that followers do not equal sales.
Works Cited:
Marsh, A. (2018, January 29). Fenty Beauty & Kylie Cosmetics Are Both Mega-Popular, But One Is Poised To Outsell The Other. Retrieved November 19, 2018, from https://www.elitedaily.com/p/fenty-beauty-vs-kylie-cosmetics-heres-how-they-stack-up-8033761
Saltzman, S. (2017, September 08). Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty Launch Offered a Much-Needed Dose of Optimism, Inclusivity and Rihanna-ness. Retrieved November 19, 2018, from https://fashionista.com/2017/09/rihanna-fenty-beauty-makeup-launch
Valentine, C. (2018, May 03). Can You Guess How Much Money Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty Made in Its First 40 Days? Retrieved November 19, 2018, from http://www.papermag.com/rihanna-fenty-beauty-worth-2565592886.html