By Dr Hamish McPharlin, CCO Element Human

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Going by the Element Human test dataset, Beauty & Personal Care brands are by far the biggest brand category for influencer marketing on TikTok. Of the thousands of TT campaigns tested worldwide by our platform it is the #1 category, with 21% of all TikTok campaigns tested being for Beauty brands.

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You might think that when it comes to Beauty products, the creative approach is pretty straightforward; show the brand, demonstrate its usage, talk about its features, and look fabulous. Job done, right? 

That’s certainly the most common approach, but Dermalogica mixed it up with their new influencer marketing campaign for their NeuroTouch Symmetry Serum. 

Dermalogica positions itself as a professional grade skincare brand, focusing on science-back formulas that put its competitor set as brands like Clinique and Kiehl’s, rather than the usual luxury brands in the category. As such, it’s no surprise that they look for influencers that have a level of legitimacy when it comes to the skincare industry - either going with those directly involved in dermatological fields, or a more general medical adjacency. 

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We put two such TikTok influencers through their paces with the Element Human measurement system, that tracks Attention to content, Emotional engagement, long term brand Memory, and brand Uplift, to see what worked and why when it comes to successfully marketing this type of brand. 

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Np.Miranda is a US-based aesthetic nurse practitioner who creates content for her 615K followers; her approach was a straight forward walk through of the product, leaning on her expertise in the field as the foundation for her argument of why the Symmetry serum works. 

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Meanwhile Nurse.Johnn, a practicing nurse with 8.2m followers took a different approach - running a humorous storyline of 2 nurses (both played by Nurse.Johnn) bemoaning the beauty problems associated with working long shifts. Thank goodness Dermalogica is around to help you look gorgeously symmetrical even during early hours at the hospital. 

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Very different approaches - so which one came out on top for Dermalogica amongst 18-44 yr old women in the US? Humour or science? Let’s take a look. 

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STOPPING AND STAYING POWER
WINNER: NEITHER

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Element Human’s Stopping & Staying Power framework measures how well a creator’s content gets attention in the social feed (Stopping Power) and creates long term memory associations for the brand (Staying Power). As you can see, the results were mixed. Nurse.Johnn was clearly the more attention-getting, delivering an impressive Top 8% ranking for seconds spent looking in the TikTok feed. Np.Miranda performed below benchmark, ranking in the 41st percentile. However the story was the opposite when it came to Staying Power. Whilst neither knocked it out of the park, Miranda was above benchmark, with a Staying Power score in the Top 35% for TikTok. 

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So Nurse.Johnn got more attention, and Miranda got better brand cut-through. 

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EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
WINNER: Nurse.Johnn

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Nurse.Johnn’s humorous storyline definitely won the day here. Some edgy pop-culture references (“why does your face look snatch?”) and a slapstick ending where one of the nurses tries to ‘eat’ the serum delivered strong emotional engagement with big spikes in Happiness (yellow line) and Surprise (white).

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Np.Miranda, meanwhile, fumbled the ball with her audience with a substantial negative emotional reaction out of the gates. She opened with a remark that sleeping on one side can cause facial asymmetry (hence the need for Dermalogica’s serum solution). The skeptical audience reacted with Disgust (green) and Sadness (blue). I’m no expert on the ways of the face, but some half-hearted digging has convinced me that Miranda might actually be right about this! Regardless, she had to work hard to win back her audience by explaining her logic, and she managed to do just that with a slow transition to positive expression; particularly Surprise (white) by the end. 

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BRAND IMPACT
WINNER: Np.Miranda

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Whilst Nurse.Johnn clearly had the more attention getting content, ultimately it was NP.Miranda’s approach that delivered the goods for Dermalogica. 

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The humorous storyline approach of Nurse.Johnn delivered eyeballs, stopped the scroll, and created a high level of engagement with the content. That translated well to relatively higher upper funnel performance;  Nurse.Johnn was ahead of Np.Miranda on driving awareness of Dermalogica. 

However looking closely, the uplifts in awareness for Dermalogica were unimpressive across the board. The +2% and +4% were well below the +11% benchmark for US beauty brands on TikTok, and it was obvious from the results that Dermalogica suffers from very low awareness. Skincare brand awareness amongst 18-44 women in the US is dominated by CeraVe, Neutrogena and Olay, whilst Dermalogica had zero unaided awareness. With these brands dominating the category, there is a need for an elongated push to get into the consciousness of this consumer base. 

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For Dermalogica’s more niche audience, it was Np.Miranda that delivered the brand impact further down the funnel. 

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Her straight-forward approach of explaining the benefits of the product, and the science and reasoning behind the approach drove memory associations with Dermalogica for Authenticity, Innovation, and Trust. This was almost certainly helped by Miranda’s job as a skincare professional; lending legitimacy to her message. This led to a +6% increase in intention to purchase a Dermalogica product - slightly under the US Beauty benchmark for TikTok at +11% - but nevertheless the stronger result of the two. 

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CONCLUSION

Emotional engagement is important - it is often the secret sauce to deliver brand goals. EH science has consistently shown that across the board, emotional engagement drives brand memory by opening up the ‘emotional chakras’ of the audience, and this in turn increases consideration of the brand, and purchase behavior. 

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However for skincare brands that position themselves as professional grade, a Influencers and skincare products - putting the Element Human lens on the new campaign from Dermalogicais what works for this target audience. They are looking to be informed, not entertained. Miranda performed well, however there were gaps in her upper funnel performance - perhaps a more eye-catching opening will stop the scroll and get more eyes on her content so she can work her magic. She started with a provocative statement, but it wasn’t shown in captions, so may have been missed by those scrolling by with the audio off. Some little tweaks to capture attention in the first few seconds may have substantially increased her already strong performance down the funnel. 

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