Why a DTC skincare brand is building an influencer roster of 2,000

With a growing number of brands looking to break into the pimple patch market, DTC skincare brand Peace Out Skincare is partnering with over 2,000 influencers in the brand’s biggest-ever marketing push to promote its new “Acne Day Dot” pimple patch. The five-year-old skincare brand, which also sells its products through beauty retailer Sephora, is using a recent $20 million investment it received from 5th Century Partners to massively expand its marketing efforts. For this campaign alone, Peace Out is quintupling its influencer marketing budget and spending six times more on advertising than the brand typically invests. The campaign’s roster of influencers will also be incorporated into Peace Out’s expansion into several new marketing mediums, including out-of-home ads on billboards and subways, direct mail and influencer-centered activations. “[The $20 million investment] has allowed us to A) not act bootstrap and B) start to build brand awareness for Peace Out outside of social media and Sephora,” said Junior Scott Pence, the company’s chief marketing officer. “We’re being allowed to play in all of these different areas now.” Ad Age's Marketers of the Year The 10 marketers that broke through in 2022 See the full list here The pimple patch market is currently valued at nearly $540 million, and projected to grow by roughly 6% year-over-year through 2030, according to data from business consulting firm Grand View Research. This growth is being spurred by “increasing demand for instant acne treatment,” with pimple patches at the forefront of this surge because of the products’ “mass marketing across the social media platforms” in recent years, the firm wrote. Brands like Peace Out have leveraged this mounting demand—the company’s revenue soared 131% in 2021 alone, according to the report. Despite exploring new marketing channels, social media and Peace Out’s influencer partners will form the core of the campaign as they have in the brand’s past marketing efforts. The brand has already partnered with 500 creators across TikTok and Instagram to kick off the campaign, which began earlier this week, and will incorporate 500 additional influencers for each month of the campaign’s six-month timeline, Pence said. These influencers will largely focus on affiliate marketing, which Pence considers, “the next generation of influencer marketing” because of its reliance on the relationship between an influencer and their audience, rather than a brand artificially inserting itself into the social media conversation, he said. Peace Out will provide promotional codes to its creator partners for those influencers to share with their followers, but otherwise largely allow creators to talk about the brand’s new product however they want with their audiences, he said. @peaceoutskincare Needless to say… Our Acne Day Dot really is ✨THAT GIRL✨ @sephora #HealAndConceal #SpotTheDot #DayDot #acnecommunity ♬ original sound - PeaceOutSkincare Along with the affiliate codes, Peace Out is gifting its Acne Day Dot patches to over 2,500 nano- and micro-influencers on both TikTok and Instagram over the next two months. Peace Out is also aiming to incorporate new categories of creators into the campaign, extending “beyond your ‘normal’ influencer” to include acne authorities like dermatologists and estheticians, as well as fitness-oriented lifestyle creators who can demonstrate the pimple patches being worn on the go, Pence added. A large focus of Peace Out’s marketing of the Acne Day Dot product will center around the patches’ ability to have makeup applied to their surface, unlike other pimple patches. To demonstrate different ways consumers can apply makeup over the patches—whether just foundation or a full-face of makeup—the brand teamed up with celebrity makeup artist Jordan Liberty, as well as makeup brand Too Faced, for a series of tutorial videos. These videos will primarily sit on Peace Out’s YouTube channel, which the brand is relaunching as part of the campaign, Pence said. “We really do feel YouTube is having a resurgence, especially [in combination] with TikTok,” he said. “People are really starting to send [audiences] from TikTok to their YouTube … It lets people find brands and also find out more about them. They’re learning more about the Peace Out brand, our products and what’s in our products. It’s a huge educational platform that I think was missing for a while but is definitely coming back.” Ahead of the holiday season, Peace Out’s YouTube and other social channels will feature makeup tutorials for holiday parties and events, he said. And over the next few months of the campaign, the messaging will revolve around other holidays as well as the changing seasons in general, “taking the Acne Day Dot through the seasons.” Peace Out will also host several events in the coming months, including a January activation at a Sephora store in Los Angeles where makeup artist influencers will offer makeovers using the pimple patches—the first time the brand has “gone to the consumer at Sephora,” Pence said. “[This campaign] really is a six-month endeavor for us—to really put Acne Day Dot in everybody's mind,” he said.

Why a DTC skincare brand is building an influencer roster of 2,000

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