THAT TIME SHANE DAWSON AND JEFFREE STAR BROKE THE INTERNET

This week, the finale of “The beautiful world of Jeffree Star” is airing on Shane Dawson’s channel. If you are not familiar with YouTube, you might want to ask what a docu-series of Shane Dawson – an OG comedy/ food/ interviewer Youtuber can have to do with turning upside down the whole beauty industry. And if you are a beauty aficionado you might be very inquisitive on why this launch didn’t make it to the mass media (where is the article Imran?). Well, don’t feel frustrated nor lost anymore, here is the analysis on the biggest and maybe most transformative makeup launch of the year you’ve been waiting for.

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Making it right when there is simply too much

The beauty industry is clogged, that is a fact. Even if the market is humongous, it is still expected to grow (expected CAGR of the global beauty market from 2019 to 2024 is 7.2%). The very regular launches feel exhausting to keep up with. To have an idea of how bad the release rate is, you just have to look at some videos of beauty influencers cleansing the PR packages that they received over the last year. However, with that profusion came a significant decrease in creative edge. If you wander through a Sephora around the makeup aisle, everything feels very repetitive. Let’s take eyeshadow for example: after having been offered “nude” palettes from every brand under the sun (I can’t count how many medium matte brown crease shade and sparkly gold colors I have in my personal collection), brands ALL switched their focus on warm shades (all those cherry, burgundy, copper colors that we think are flattering when often … well they just make you look like you had pink eye). Today we apparently live between coral everything and icy blue.

How did Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star create the ultimate edge for their palette that could have been lost in a sea of other products? Glad you asked ZonErZ, glad you asked...

Creating deeper meaning and relevance to a product

To my mind, a real transformative strategic move for Jeffree and Shane was to actually take the time to create a strong narrative around their collection. By that I mean that the palette and lipsticks are all referencing Jeffree and Shane’s friendship (for example shade names like “are we filming” and “my pills” are taking the customer back to Shane and Jeffree previous series) and personal online careers (the shade Tanacon for example, referring to the first docu-series format of Shane Dawson produced and had major success on the internet in 2018).

"A real transformative strategic move for Jeffree and Shane was to actually take the time to create a strong narrative around their collection"

Even the theme of the collection revolving around conspiracy and controversy is very aligned with Star’s and Dawson's personal brands. Jeffree is definitely the kween of controversies and has mastered the art of navigating his terrible videos saying the n word, beef with other social media influencers. As for Shane … well, he sees conspiracy everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, all brands generally try to create an ecosystem of coherent signs around their launches, or at least to come up with a common theme that captures the spirit of the release. But the meaning behind colors, finishes, packaging usually doesn’t go further than “well the theme is cosmic now so we did a holographic packaging hihihi”. The real storytelling in beauty is usually only saved for perfume. For makeup, the focus isn't usually put on the creation of a strong emotional bond with the customer.

Go slow

In an industry where speed to market seems to be the ultimate success factor, this collaboration made a point of going against the trend. The products were teased for a few episodes of 50 minutes each, several weeks before being actually launched. Besides, the videos didn’t even feel like ads. They rather had “behind the scene” attributes that allowed viewers to really dive into the creative process of Jeffree and Shane. This slower approach to “go-to-market” is very much in alignment with creating a deeper meaning for the products. Besides, building a makeup collection on shared history and friendship demands that the friendship and history are here (and visible) in the first place … duh. That itself can’t be expedited in a 30 second TV campaign.

To support that kind of “slow momentum building communication”, Star and Dawson chose to shy away from mainstream media and used YouTube as the almost exclusive means of communication for their products. Since the heydays of Kylie Jenner, we’ve known this “social media only” marketing strategy is effective. What is brand new today is the commitment on, guess what, slowing everything down.

"The long 5-episode docu-series was thus genius, in the sense that it communicated all the messages the products were meant to convey in a non-transactional way"

At this point in my life, I think I wasted a good month staring at Kylie Jenner’s swatching her lipsticks on her Snapchat stories. But 10 seconds of smearing lipstick on your forearm doesn’t really build on an emotional weight that you can instill into the product. The long 5-episode docu-series was thus genius, in the sense that it communicated all the messages the products were meant to convey in a non-transactional way.

Create the ultimate peer-to-peer collaboration

Using the creative juices of a non-beauty person

It is still coming as a shock to me that what might have been the most successful makeup launch of 2019 was orchestrated and creatively co-directed by somebody who has almost nothing to do with the industry altogether. But then, when I really think about it - it definitely makes sense (thinking fast and slow guys … I’m trying). Hear me out, it happens all the time in the fashion industry, especially for sneakers, where rappers, models, comedians are invited to design their own shoe. Those one-time shoe designers seem to have more ties to the fashion industry than Shane Dawson to the beauty industry. Buy actually, beauty stands for a fair share of YouTube’s trending content now and Shane has done a fantastic job of being an observer of it all through the years. It thus makes sense that he had a high-level view and creative knowledge necessary to create a collection that would be aligned with the state of the beauty market.

Plus one can easily argue that his fresh eye on makeup and alternate perspective on creativity had a tremendous value in creating what we already stated as being a meaningful, stand-out product, in a sea of dupes.

Creating a new segment and mastering the minds of the new beauty consumer

The response to the launch, both in terms of views to the series (7 episodes, 131 millions of views) and sales (the collection was sold out in 5 minutes and shopify apparently went down the day of the launch) was overwhelmingly positive because the collection made sense to a brand new, underserved segment of consumers on the market.

We are entering an era where makeup gets more and more mainstream regardless of gender, wealth, social status, etc. It means that the beauty customer becomes multi-faceted and that a lot of new make-up curious people, having access to the information on product that they have now while not having a massive amount of product of their own, are going to look for new brand attributes. If quality has to be there (everybody can watch 10 reviews on a product before buying it), I think that now the most important factors for this particular segment in buying beauty products is trust, authenticity, and inclusivity.

"The response to the launch was overwhelmingly positive because the collection made sense to a brand new, underserved segment of consumers on the market"

Jeffree and Shane mastered the minds of new curious but informed beauty customers because they elevated makeup a playful experience, offering an “inside-joke” product while holding on top quality standards to foster a sense of belonging and trust in the consumer.

The collaboration basically carved out its own segment in the beauty market by tapping into profiles of consumers who weren’t really part of that business before.

Did I get the palette? No – it was sold out in 5 minutes man. But hats down to those 2 business and creative forces. It is refreshing to finally have a new approach to beauty products

Mad love

Shane's channel

Jeffree's channel

Link to the series