The Top 50 Beauty Brands By EMV In 2022

29 Jan

In 2022, the adage “content is king” proved too simplistic a view for brands aiming to not only adapt to, but thrive within the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Data from Tribe Dynamics shows that almost all beauty brands saw declines in earned media value in 2022 — even people who saw a year-over-year increase within the variety of social media creators mentioning them — largely on account of the growing shift toward short-form video content, which brands are still learning to navigate.

“It’s not that the underlying drivers of EMV are changing dramatically, but more that there’s a shift in consumer preference when it comes to kinds of content and channels; that’s essentially the most significant change that’s occurring,” said Conor Begley, cofounder of Tribe Dynamics and chief strategy officer at parent company, CreatorIQ.

As consumers devote more of their attention toward TikTok and Instagram Reels, that are inherently less favorable to branded content, brands have been tasked with conceiving and sourcing content that gives the awareness-building, sales-driving effects of an ad — without seeming like an ad.

“The best way TikTok is created structurally is that it favors essentially the most interesting and entertaining content —it’s not about who you follow, it’s about what TikTok thinks goes to be the perfect video for you, and so content that’s branded in nature doesn’t are inclined to get as high engagement as non-branded content, since it just doesn’t get watched as often,” Begley said.

In brief, because TikTok’s discoverability focused algorithm is just not as conducive to branded content as, say, a platform like YouTube, where users mostly browse content via their subscription box and thus, sponsored content has an equal likelihood of being seen, influencers simply opted to provide less branded content normally last 12 months, says Begley.

In 2022, ColourPop Cosmetics drew the best amount of EMV at $444,341,552 — a large total, yet still a 27 percent decrease versus the 12 months prior. Other high-ranking brands by the metric, like NYX Skilled Makeup, MAC Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty, saw an identical effect, posting respective year-over-year declines of 19 percent, 6 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

Among the many top 10 brands by EMV in 2022, only Charlotte Tilbury and Rare Beauty saw gains, garnering 29 percent and 69 percent increases, which were driven largely by the brands’ surging momentum on TikTok.

Videos tagged with #CharlotteTilbury on TikTok have amassed 2.1 billion views up to now, while videos tagged with #RareBeauty have 2.8 billion total views. (For reference, #ColourPopCosmetics counts 244.2 million views, #NYX has 1.2 billion views and #MacCosmetics has 928.7 million views).

One factor driving Rare Beauty’s social media success is its microinfluencer program, called the Rare Collective, which the brand launched in 2021, and which head of world communications Jessica White previously told Beauty Inc has been instrumental in growing the brand’s reach.

“[The program] has allowed us to tap into area of interest audiences whose values align with our brand values and consequently, we’ve seen the number of individuals talking about our brand consistently grow,” she said.

ColourPop Cosmetics has also benefited from the climbing power of microinfluencers, defined as creators with lower than 100,000 followers, garnering 38 percent of its total EMV from the group from August 2020 through July 2022.

“Smaller-scale influencers are more vital than ever to engagement for beauty brands,” said Alexander Rawitz, director of content marketing at CreatorIQ, adding the group enjoys higher average engagement rates than another influencer tier (this phenomenon has held true within the case of Charlotte Tilbury, too, since at the very least 2020, Beauty Inc previously reported).

All but 4 of the highest 50 brands by EMV are makeup brands (the exceptions being Olaplex, Redken, Glow Recipe and La Roche-Posay), which Begley says is just not necessarily a sign that customers are any less concerned about hair care, skincare and fragrance, but fairly a mirrored image of the content-type limitations these categories pose.

“Makeup is very visual in nature, making it easy to discuss — you possibly can create and showcase such quite a lot of looks using color cosmetics,” he said. “While it’s easy to discuss a skin or hair care product, but there’s only a lot you possibly can actually do with it, so it just is sensible that that content gets talked about less.”

While they might not have cracked the top-50 rating, brands like Tatcha, Tula, Supergoop and Drunk Elephant were identified by Tribe Dynamics as being among the many top skincare EMV earners of 2022.

So far as the correlation between EMV and sales, lots of 2022’s top brands by EMV — MAC Cosmetics, Charlotte Tilbury, Rare Beauty — also turned in strong sales performances for the 12 months, with MAC Cosmetics specifically being the most important contributor to makeup growth within the U.S. and Canada in 2022.

“When you have got a ton of individuals talking about you, you’re gaining share voice — even when persons are more excited to discuss you than to purchase you today, that can even out over time; those people will develop into customers eventually,” said Begley.

For brands searching for to take care of, or increase, their EMV in 2023, Rawitz believes microinfluencer investment might be pivotal, while Begley adds that relinquishing creative control to content creators will prove crucial in creating branded content that succeeds on TikTok and and even YouTube and Instagram, that are increasingly pushing short-form content in the shape of Shorts and Reels, respectively.

“You’ve got to let creators have creative control because they know their audience; I believe where it fails is when a brand is heavy-handed, or after they’re pushing how a message must be delivered, after they must be leaning on [the creator] to steer the direction,” said Begley.