Tina Pozzi, Director of Communications for Urban Decay, oversees all social media and public relations for the edgy beauty brand. Prior to this role, Tina was the Director of Social Media for Urban Decay. Adding public relations to her list of responsibilities “made sense” in that the brand works closely with bloggers, and having a concise social media and public relations strategy was important. Here, Tina discusses how social media plays into promoting Urban Decay, the brand’s most successful social campaign in 2014 and how tracking consumer behavior is a goal for 2015.

CEW Beauty Insider: How do you use social media to promote Urban Decay? Which platforms work best and why?

Tina Pozzi: We use social media at Urban Decay as an integral part of launching products each season to leverage core consumers into building a frenzy around a launch. We do that through full campaigns to bring product stories to life, by creating unique hashtags and videos to support a launch and by highlighting user-generated content. We use many social channels, with Facebook historically our most popular content hub, but we have seen a slight migration to some of the more visual-based channels, such as Pinterest and Instagram. We recently launched on Tumblr, and just reached a big milestone: 1 million followers on Instagram. We do work with the ecommerce team to take a look at what is driving traffic to the site. I think the content we’re pushing out, the very beautiful and visual images that tell a story about a product, is what’s getting people to click through.

BI: What trends are you seeing in social media marketing?


TP: I think what we’re seeing is a focus on user generated content and brands looking to their core customers to help tell their story.

BI:Do you see videos as a key way to engaging with consumers?


TP: Videos are an important strategy for us. We focus on two types of videos, brand story telling and how-to’s, which is important for a cosmetics company. It’s very important that we leverage our community of bloggers and view them as an authority on how to use the products.

BI: Is Urban Decay increasing spend in digital marketing in 2015 vs 2014?


TP: We will be increasing spend slightly in social media. That being said, as a brand, the majority of our growth has been organic and our spend here has been very small. We will be investing more in Google Analytics to better understand when she is most likely to engage with us. The when is just as important as the what.

BI: How does social media lend itself to creating loyalty with consumers?


TP: I think that’s two-fold. Our goal for social media channels is to create a community where consumers can ask questions—we love that they’re coming to us for brand information. Most important is the customer service we provide on social media. People are more apt to tweet or write something on Facebook than to reach out on our 1-800 number. It’s really important in dealing with feedback, which builds loyalty.

BI: What’s one of your most successful campaigns?
TP: We worked closely with the ecommerce team for the June launch of Perversion Mascara. We executed a teaser campaign to build a frenzy prior to launch, we built a micro site and featured the brand, user generated content and blogger content on the site. This full campaign realized 542 online impressions and over 2,200 posts under the campaign hashtag.

BI: What brands outside of beauty do you look to as leaders in online and social media marketing?


TP: Burberry innovates and they continue to be some of the best early adopters of new technology. They always execute in a luxurious way.