Influencer mentions do not necessarily mean engagement in skincare: report

October 3, 2018

La Mer partners with Mr Porter for skincare promotion

Luxury skincare brand La Mer has wielded its status as a highly coveted brand in tandem with social influencers in a manner earning the brand the most social engagement without sacrificing its authenticity.

A new report from Traackr reveals that in the first half of 2018, Estée Lauder Cos.' La Mer has seen the most engagement of any other mass or luxury skincare brand thanks to its partnerships with numerous social influencers. The "State of Influence in Skincare" report shows that premium brands are seeing the most engagement because of their paid promotions, but independent cosmetics are becoming more of a threat through organic content.

“Skincare has always been a strong category for influencer marketing, but it's recently been gaining speed even faster than other categories,” said Pierre-Loic Assayag, CEO and cofounder of Traackr. “Influencers are driving a big conversation around skincare across all social media platforms, with brands like La Mer and Tatcha setting the trends for the category.

“Skincare in general is a very large category in beauty,” he said. “Luxury and premium are a smaller chunk of the market from a revenue perspective, but the fact that you can get uplift with influencers to lead the whole category on social media is quite remarkable.

“Premium and luxury are always an interesting category to look at in influencer marketing because you want to get as many impressions as possible but also play with notion of scarcity as a luxury brand.”

Tracking social engagement
While La Mer ranked second in mentions from influencers, the brand was able to leverage this to earn the top spot for engagement. However, French cosmetic brand Clarins saw the top spot in mentions, but dropped to eighth place in terms of engagement.

View this post on Instagram

#Regram @tenipanosian from the La Mer Kelp Harvest last month — "Headed out onto the water with @lamer to watch their kelp harvest in action. Getting to see the process was so exciting! Almost as exciting as sitting in a hot tub full of a thousand jars of Crème de la Mer. I also got very inspired and ate the kelp right out of the ocean. Kelp > kale any day. @saks #lovelamer #lamerinfluencer"
A post shared by La Mer (@lamer) on Sep 26, 2018 at 2:46pm PDT

Following La Mer, beauty powerhouses Dior, Estée Lauder, Chanel and Guerlain filled out the top five positions in engagement, in that order.

La Mer saw an engagement of 12 million, ahead of Dior at 6 million, Estée at just less than 6 million, Chanel at almost 4 million and Guerlain at 3 million.

Dior had the most video views with more than 90 million on social media.

Natalie Portman often stars in Dior cosmetic campaigns

The most engagement came from Instagram and YouTube, but all brands saw interaction on all platforms. Dior saw the most engagement on YouTube, while La Mer saw the most from Instagram.

There was also a discrepancy between the brand mentions from influencers and where they saw the most engagement.

Additional insight
The global beauty market is growing and is on pace to reach a value of more than $800 billion in the next five years, propelled by consumers' appetites for innovative skincare and fun, new products.

Younger consumers, those between ages 18 and 24, are one of the driving forces behind the beauty market's growth, according to Fashionbi's "Beauty Market Trend" report. Celebrity brands, natural beauty, personalization and gender-bending products are also becoming more popular among beauty buyers (see story).

High-end beauty and personal care products will likely dominate the beauty sector for the foreseeable future, since they have outperformed the standard two years in a row, according to a report from Euromonitor.

The insights allude that the premium beauty industry is now leading the way, with an almost 6 percent growth. North America is leading with premium beauty and personal care prospects per capita spend (see story).

“The most surprising insight from the report is the rising power of indie skincare brands,” Mr. Assayag said “While luxury and premium brands garner the lion's share of engagement, indie brands like Tatcha and Drunk Elephant are growing in influencer mentions and engagement, which are much less likely to pay for mentions and rather grow their fan base organically.”

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Influencer mentions do not necessarily mean engagement in skincare: report

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