When did Christmas become the season for viral marketing via photo uploads? Yet it has, and agency EVB has had a lot to do with that new tradition, having produced the first two seasons of OfficeMax’s Yuletide “Elf Yourself” phenomenon.
Now the group has conceived another holiday campaign that hopes to grow viral legs. This one, for cosmetics retailer Sephora, invites users to indulge in a new look at MistletoeMakeover.com, where they can upload their photos and try four new cosmetic looks that Sephora is featuring in its retail stores and on its e-commerce site: everything from “Smokey Sugar Plum” and “Merry Berry” to “Santa’s Little Temptress” and “O, Tannen Babe.”
Users can experiment with different Sephora makeup in the holiday lines and then send a holiday e-greeting to their friends along with an interactive “wink” or “kiss.” And as a reward for taking part in the makeover experience — and as an inducement to click through to the main Sephora.com Web site — users get a promo code they can enter at the site to earn a free mini-lipstick sample or free eyelashes with their next online purchase.
Part of the fun from other photo upload campaigns comes from seeing your face or a friend’s looking impossibly artificial in an elf costume or a superhero outfit. But this effort for Sephora needed a platform that could make even indifferent photos look good with makeup added on.
“If you’re trying to look pretty but end up looking like a clown, that’s not a good outcome for Sephora,” says EVB associate creative director Jaime Robinson. To refine the picture capabilities, EVB reached out to photo technology from TAAZ.com for the Mistletoe Makeover.
“We were very pleasantly surprised at how great the makeovers wound up looking regardless of the subject’s complexion or the quality of the photo,” says EVB CEO Daniel Stein. “The TAAZ platform can actually make people look better.”
Robinson says she just heard from her mother — a woman of a certain age, as they say — who was impressed with the holiday look she was given. “She said, ‘Jaime, I never thought I would look good in that makeup — I may have to go buy it,’ ” Robinson says. “When you consider that it’s trendy purple lipstick and dark eyeliner, that’s saying a lot for the photo quality.”
Stein says the MistletoeMakeover.com site was in development for longer than the average campaign. “We actually spent a lot more time on this project than you might expect, because we wanted to get the small details perfect,” he says. Those include subtle animations at the site and within the makeover screens that will give users another reason to keep coming back and to stay longer on the site when they do return.
“We wanted the experience to be simple enough that people can get through it quickly the first time, and yet engaging enough that they will want to come back and do it again — and then pass it on to other people,” Stein says.
There’s little media support for the campaign. Besides seeding the site out to a collection of Sephora fan bloggers, promoting it on its own “Beauty & the Blog,” and sending out e-mail to its in-house list, Sephora is relying on viral spread alone to give this campaign a lift.
As for why viral campaigns are gaining such visibility at the holidays, Stein thinks they serve as a way to cut through the welter of mass ads that appear this time of year. “There’s so much money spent on traditional ads at the holidays that marketers risk getting lost in all the clutter,” he says. “That’s why Office Max wanted ‘Elf Yourself,’ and that’s why Sephora wanted a viral campaign right now.”
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