- Estée Lauder on Monday (March 24) launched a global campaign, “Beauty Sleep Dupe,” that stars actress Kristen Bell, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- The effort promotes the brand’s Advanced Night Repair Serum and centers across the claim that the product visibly repairs the skin of poor sleepers by “duping” — or nearly replicating — beauty sleep itself. Bell stars in two 30-second spots showcasing the product’s capabilities.
- Media spans digital, social and retail platforms. Estée Lauder Companies continues to work through a restructuring program that features a rise in consumer-facing investments like promoting.
Estée Lauder is asserting its authority in what it calls “night skin science” with a global campaign promoting its Advanced Night Repair Serum, a product the brand claims can visibly repair the skin of poor sleepers who get lower than 6.5 hours of sleep per night. The effort arrives on the heels of Sleep Awareness Week (March 9-15) and following the appointment of Matthew Walker as Estée Lauder’s first global sleep science advisor.
Key to “Beauty Sleep Dupe” are two 30-second video spots. In the primary, Bell — a self-proclaimed “chronically awake” mom — is introduced to the Advanced Night Repair Serum and suddenly finds herself stuck in a “Groundhog Day”-esque loop where she constantly wakes up with perfectly smooth skin despite having slept lower than 8 hours. The industrial sees Bell “duping it forward” by sharing the Advanced Night Repair Serum with everyone she knows.
Together, the 2 spots could help Estée Lauder connect with key younger audiences, particularly other millennial mothers like Bell, who understand the impacts of getting lower than 8 hours of sleep all too well. Creative, casting, script and production for the campaign was led by marketing and communications agency Shadow.
Dupe culture, or the tactic of finding reasonably priced replacements for costly items, has been riffed on by other marketers, including E.l.f. Cosmetics and Olaplex. Estée Lauder’s tackle dupes may very well be viewed as a departure from typical luxury marketing, though its claim that it will possibly dupe sleep itself sets a high bar. Advanced Night Repair Serum retails for $128 for a 1.7oz bottle, which some might consider pricey for a dupe (though there’s no price tag on sleep).
A variety of legacy beauty marketers, including Maybelline and Estée Lauder sister brand Clinique, try to age down in hopes of winning over younger cohorts like Gen Z. That’s to not say older generations have come out of focus: Brands including Bliss and Laura Geller have recently debuted efforts targeting older millennials and Gen X.
Estée Lauder’s parent continues to work through a restructuring strategy that recently saw the business announce plans to chop between 5,800 to 7,000 jobs, or as much as 11% of its global workforce. The move, which expanded prior turnaround efforts, got here only a month after latest CEO Stéphane de La Faverie took on the highest job.
Other points of Estée Lauder Companies’ turnaround include increased promoting investments, greater simplification and accelerating some processes while outsourcing other services. The company recently partnered with Adobe to refine the launch of its digital marketing campaigns through generative artificial intelligence. Estée Lauder Companies’ net sales for the quarter ended Dec. 31 fell 6% yr over yr to $4 billion.
Read the complete article here
