Maybelline Philippines makes strategic video shift to focus on attentive reach

Headquartered in Paris, L'Oréal is home to a handful of household name brands for skin care, makeup, perfume, and hair care products. Maybelline—one of the world's biggest make-up brands—was keen on bolstering its reputation in the Philippines as a go-to resource on how to re-create the hottest looks with the most on-trend cosmetics. Video has long been at the core of Maybelline’s marketing, but after seeing more of its customers watching content online, the brand went 100% digital, starting in 2017.

While rolling out its new video content, Maybelline also decided to gauge the effectiveness of its chosen online video platforms. So the brand tapped third-party measurement company MOAT to track and compare its video ads across platforms, look beyond simple reach metrics and focus on viewability, and learn where its most engaged audiences were spending their time.

Finding the right video platform to reach and engage Filipinas

Maybelline brought on MOAT’s expertise to measure two of the most important factors in online video efficiency: viewability and completion quality. Viewability comes down to two things: 1) the ad takes up 50% or more of the screen it’s playing on, and 2) the ad plays for more than two seconds after it renders. Completion quality is the percentage of video completions that are both audible and visible.

After four weeks of testing, MOAT’s reports revealed that YouTube achieved a viewability rate of 95%—3.5X higher than any other online platform. YouTube’s completion quality also came up to 74%, 19X higher completion rate than other platforms.¹

The data unveiled a key finding for Maybelline: Views on other video platforms can be largely incidental or passive, such as when videos only play for one or two seconds before being “swiped” or “closed,” or when they play in a background tab. For that reason, Maybelline realized that attentive reach and video efficiency were more crucial to achieve than reach alone. After all, what’s the value in reaching 1,000 viewers if only 10 of them are actually paying attention?

Because YouTube is a destination where people come specifically to watch video content, its users are much more engaged, attentive, and tuned in. Inspired by that insight, Maybelline’s marketing team decided to make YouTube their prime platform for the new campaign.

Helping Filipinas #MakeItHappen with engaging beauty content

After deciding on YouTube as its platform, the Maybelline team went to work on developing compelling content, following a 3H Content Strategy:

1. Hero: Developing content with global fashion icons and also Maybelline girls like Gigi Hadid, Jourdan Dunn, and Emily Didonato, to inspire Filipinas and get them excited about the latest trends using the hashtag #MakeItHappen. Local Filipina celebrities like Liza Soberano also helped drive awareness and relatability to the brand’s messaging.
2. Hub: An official Maybelline ‘squad’—celebrity makeup artist Jigs Mayuga, fashion vlogger Kryz Uy, and Asia’s Next Top Model Cycle 5 winner Maureen Wroblewitz—was sent to New York Fashion Week to give audiences an inside look at where fashion trends are decided and crafted.
3. Help: Detailed video tutorials with some of YouTube’s top beauty creatorsshowing how to replicate the latest looks using Maybelline products.

Maybelline promoted its new videos through a mix of TrueView skippable ads and six-second bumper ads. TrueView was used to tell more in-depth brand storytelling, while bumpers were a quick and powerful way to promote the brand and products at scale.

Sales continue to soar after shifting focus to viewability metrics

Following the platform strategy shift and the #MakeItHappen campaign, the brand’s marketing team was pleased to see an immediate impact. In just three months, Maybelline Philippines boosted its sales growth by 32%, making it the fastest growing brand in its category.

“Understanding how our consumers were digesting our content through the MOAT analysis was an eye-opening experience for our entire team,” said Sandy Tiu, senior product manager for Maybelline Philippines.

“We realized that in the past, we were putting way too much focus on reaching as many people as possible and weren’t considering what really delivers our brand message and drives sales: attention and engagement. Now we're tracking every single campaign and monitoring what each platform provides in terms of viewability extremely closely. It’s about putting the right content in the right channel for us.”