This week’s WWD Special Issue, Beauty Inc., included an interesting feature on beauty brands’ use of YouTube celebrities to gain subscribers and increase views on the platform. While popular brands have slowly grown their online video audiences in recent years through original product and how-to content, the top five YouTube beauty “vloggers” each have more views than the top 10 beauty brands combined. These online stars are seen as authentic and have developed credibility in their advice and recommendations as a result. With YouTube visitors watching over 6 billion hours of programming on the site monthly, the platform is an important vehicle for brand awareness development and customer engagement. L’Oreal was among the first to leverage the popularity of beauty vloggers by partnering with Michelle Phan to produce videos for Lancome’s YouTube channel. The results were so well received that the company partnered with Phan to develop her own branded cosmetics line that launched last month. Many luxury brands are slower to embrace social media influencers and the platforms on which they operate, and are losing out on the opportunity to engage customers and market their products as a result.
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