A new report from WeArisma has revealed the “top-performing beauty brands among influencers on social media”. The influencer and social intelligence platform has launched its Beauty State of Influence Report and said that “authentic influential voices” are hugely important to beauty brands’ marketing strategies with some brands having harnessed this very successfully.

In fact, Sephora and L’Oréal “win make-up” with the brands overcoming “the overall decline in engagement with make-up content through activations at the Olympics”.

Meanwhile, so-called skinfluencers “love Garnier” and content from influencers about the brand generated the highest earned media value (EMV), engagement, impressions and mentions in the category.

And perfumeries leverage star power. Dior and Jo Malone saw high engagement levels on the back of campaigns with Rhianna for Dior and Tom Hardy and Olivia Culpo for Jo Malone. 

The report uses WeArisma’s proprietary analytics metric ‘Ripple Impact’ that shows how “the impact of influencers’ content is significantly further-reaching and engaging than brands’ owned content”. 

Across the highest-performing make-up, skincare and fragrance brands worldwide, Ripple Impact generated up to 19 times more EMV, 26 times as many impressions, 83 times more engagement and 73 times more content than content from the brands’ accounts.

But while it has majored on high-budget events and strategic celebrity partnerships, the report said “the make-up industry has struggled to keep pace with fragrance and skincare, experiencing a year-on-year decline of 10% in mentions”. 

The brands bucking this trend are the aforementioned industry giants LVMH’s Sephora and L’Oréal, whose engagements saw increases of 27.3% and 35.1%, respectively. Both brands tapped into the cultural moment of the Olympics with immersive, on-the-ground activations, highlighting the growing synergy between beauty and sports. Sephora’s ‘Hot on Social’ edit also continued to drive TikTok buzz, while must-have make-up and product launches contributed to the brand’s massive $1.9 billion EMV. 

WeArisma said “understanding customer needs, such as the rising cost of living, is crucial for make-up brands’ success on social media, but these campaigns must be executed with authenticity. As prices rise and economic uncertainty presses on, we have seen brands appeal to their Gen Z customer base by normalising dupes, and influencers play a huge part in building trust in more budget-friendly products”.

As for skincare, its content has jumped in popularity over the last year, experiencing an impressive 38% year-on-year increase in EMV. L’Oréal’s Garnier continues to appeal across all demographics, particularly among skinfluencers, securing the top spot across EMV, engagement, impressions, and mentions. 

But it’s not alone at the top of the tree with the report saying that “an ingredient-focused strategy that leverages recommendations from dermatologists with strong social followings proves popular”, making other L’Oréal-owned brand Vichy “stand out in Virality grade alongside CeraVe and Garnier”. The beauty giant’s La Roche-Posay brand also performed well, “driven by its position as the official sunscreen partner of the US Open and a content strategy that leans towards informative messaging”.

WeArisma’s report said the top-performing fragrance brands use “star-driven campaigns to dominate the conversation on social media”. Traditional luxury brands, such as Dior, Prada and Mugler, “do this most effectively, generating high amounts of EMV and engagement. However, new-age brands are also driving significant buzz in the fragrance space”.

Dior has the highest overall influencer impact, but Jo Malone comes a close second for engagement. With fragrance at more accessible prices and strategic partnerships including Tom Hardy and Olivia Culpo, influencer content about Jo Malone generated 4.7 times more EMV, 3.1 times more impressions and 3.8 times more engagement than brand-owned content.