During November, a key month for engaging consumers on the benefits of keeping skin moisturized and protected from the cold weather, several skin care brands rose to the top as far as how socially influential they were. Taking into account views on blog posts and YouTube videos; tweets; and likes, comments and shares on Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest posts, here’s who ranked in Tribe Dynamics’ Top 10 skin care brands for November:
1. NEUTROGENA $1,679,801.00 EMV
2. CLINIQUE $1,503,521.05 EMV
3. DOVE $1,124,424.75 EMV
4. SUAVE $1,024,566.50 EMV
5. CLARISONIC $921,047.75 EMV
6. SOAP & GLORY $866,575.75 EMV
7. L’OCCITANE $674,303.25 EMV
8. ELIZABETH ARDEN $647,051.25 EMV
9. CLARINS $628,350.50 EMV
10. MURAD $529,304.00 EMV
Tribe reported that for the month of November Neutrogena led other brands with $1,679,801 earned media value [EMV], most notably due to a series of valuable posts published on Instagram in response to its sponsorship of the Latin Grammys at the end of the month. The brand used its influence and reputation to recruit some of the community’s top female influencers to represent its brand at the event.
After dropping out of Tribe’s Top 10 in recent months, Clarisonic had an impressive comeback in November. The brand more than doubled its October earned media performance, excelling on Instagram with valuable posts from partner Birchbox. Also in November, L’Occtaine, Elizabeth Arden and Murad all joined Tribe’s Top 10 with drastic improvements from previous months. In addition to these brands, there were many others whose earned media performance placed them just shy of the leaderboard. Overall, Tribe said it’s beginning to see greater success amongst a diverse group of brands, across multiple segments.
In November, prestige brands extended their lead over mass-market brands, approximately doubling the gap in earned media performance that existed in October, Tribe reported. With seven of the Top 10 brands, prestige outperformed mass-market competitors by 20.31% overall. However, of the six channels monitored, mass was still able to secure a higher overall EMV on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The overall success of November’s prestige brands can be attributed to a significant lead on YouTube, in addition to performance on Pinterest and blogs. For the second month running, prestige brands have showed the greatest dominance on YouTube. In October, it was the only channel where prestige outperformed mass-market brands at a great enough margin to also outperform mass overall. Brands in this segment are benefiting from “haul” videos, in which a vlogger shares with her audience the latest additions to her makeup collection. For the month, a majority of these videos, which can receive upwards of 1 million views, were specifically “Sephora hauls” followed by “Ulta hauls”. As one of the leading retailers in the industry, Sephora has a great deal of control over the products favored and talked about by some of the most well-recognized, most-watched influencers.
In respect to a market segment comparison, it’s interesting to note that in addition to two mass-market brands dropping out of Tribe’s Top 10 for November, a majority of the brands hovering right at the bottom cusp were prestige. Those brands included Dermologica, Biore, Kiehl’s and Philosophy. As discussed in Tribe’s October Skincare Report, ingredient branding has come to play a central role in consumer decision-making; modern consumers hold skin care brands in particular accountable when it comes to the quality of ingredients and production processes. It would make sense that prestige and luxury brands are benefiting from this shift in consumer mindset as these products often include ingredients that are more expensive and more difficult for manufacturers to attain, or at least consumers believe this to be the case based on the price differential between prestige and mass.
With skin care consumers placing greater value in the quality of the product as opposed to the price, an upward trend in the EMV of prestige brands makes perfect sense. It’s also reasonable to assume that in conjunction with increases in EMV, prestige brands are benefiting from greater success in offline sales.
To read Tribe Dynamics’ November skin care report in its entirety, please click here.
