Paris Hilton, Ed Westwick, Chad Michael Murray, Rachel Bilson, Kelly Rowland, Hilary Duff, Mischa Barton, Gabrielle Union, Amanda Seyfried and Christina Milian.
Other than being icons of the early aughts, what these celebrities have in common is that they’re all part of the viral Juicy Tube Kissing Web, a campaign launched bu L’Oréal-owned Lancôme on May 15.
The goal of the campaign is to boost sales of Lancôme’s iconic Juicy Tubes Original Lip Gloss ($25), which many millennials remember as their first prestige lip purchase. In addition to the celeb partners, the brand tapped a wider web of content creators and meme accounts to further amplify the campaign. They include Serena Kerrigan, Joey Zauzig, Kit Keenan, @butlikemaybe (aka, Arianna Margulis) and @2000sanxiety.
Juicy Tubes first launched in 2000, and according to a rep for Lancôme, the brand sold 20 tubes per minute at the product’s peak. The product was briefly discontinued in 2018 and made a comeback in 2020. Now, despite a market filled with balms, oils, tints and stains, the brand is targeting sales, said Julie Selig, Lancôme’s head of consumer engagement.
“We have made sure that all of our retailers are in stock. We have email blasts going out. You can go to Lancome.com and find your Juicy Tube shade. And we have a Seventeen magazine-style quiz that you can take,” she said. In other words, her team is ready.
The campaign taps into nostalgia, specifically for the ‘90’s and early aughts, which have been trending for at least five years but still going strong. In many of the hit TV shows and movies filmed during that time, Juicy Tubes were used on set, Selig said, referencing hits like “The O.C.,” “One Tree Hill,” “Lizzie McGuire” and “Gossip Girl.”
For the new campaign, each of the featured stars created unique content that plays into the nostalgia of the product itself — some more literally, and some more playfully. “When Lancôme is mentioned, Juicy Tubes often come to mind — so we wanted to bring that to the forefront. We created this kissing web of celebrities from the 2000s in a very fun, interactive way to reinforce that you can have a natural romance with this product on set or off set,” Selig said. The overarching concept is that kisses — whether you’re a man or a woman — are better with Juicy Tubes, which have long been known for their smells — which vary, but are mostly quite sweet or fruity — and their sticky, thick feeling.
Hilton’s video sees her rediscover a Juicy Tube gloss in her luxurious closet, noting how it takes her back to when her “cell phone had a keyboard, … [but she] still never texted back.” In Duff’s, she recalls the nostalgia of the early aughts with a cartoon version of herself, à la “Lizzie McGuire.” And finally, Westwick’s features a high-production scene in an elevator, in which the actor plays a modern-day Chuck Bass. “Let’s face it, the Upper East Side was built on three things: scandals, secrets and this,” he says to the camera, whipping out a Marshmallow Electro Juicy Tube and dubbing it a “status symbol.”
Marketing campaigns are typically anchored to new launches, said Isabelle Carramaschi, Lancôme’s svp of marketing. As such, the goal for marketers is to communicate about the product’s formula and winning properties, for example. But this campaign was different, she said. Much of the inspiration came from talking to consumers — primarily millennials — about Juicy Tubes and recognizing their emotional connection to the product. Rather than the product’s formula or price, the consumers spoke about their experience with the product. “They all talked about the prom, their first date, their first kiss,” Carramaschi said. “They also talked about the scent and the memory attached to it.”
While the campaign may cater to millennials, Carramaschi was not concerned about the brand’s ability to win over Gen Z, she said. For starters, they infamously love nostalgia, too. The campaign’s other themes are also universal. “Love is universal,” Carramaschi said. “First kisses are universal. It doesn’t matter how old you are.”
One would imagine that a campaign with such a star-studded roster would cost an astronomical, unimaginable sum. But, though Selig declined to specify the brand’s investment, she said, “You would be surprised — it wasn’t what everybody is thinking.”
She added, “We have a really great partner we worked with. We got on the phone with at least seven of the 10 celebs themselves, … and they were so excited about this campaign. We talked creative, they gave us their ideas — it was a really collaborative and fun process.”
When Glossy spoke to Selig on Tuesday, about midway through the campaign rollout, Lancôme was already seeing virality. “We’ve seen a huge uptick on Google search. It’s off the charts. We’ve garnered over 50 million video views and 3 million engagements in four days,” she reported. Westwick’s (11.3 million Instagram followers) post, co-posted with the brand, was proving a runaway hit, with over 368,000 likes and over 10,000 comments in four days. And this was all before the brand had even turned on paid media, Sellig said.
Though sales are admittedly key, the brand also wants to drive “a cultural conversation,” Sellig said, adding, “We needed to bring Lancôme and Juicy Tubes back onto the map in a really relevant way.”
While the lip gloss category is crowded, Selig called nostalgia the brand’s point of difference. “This is our signature gloss. This is where we started,” she said. “It’s pulling at your emotional strings. … [When a space is so crowded], people buy the brands they resonate with and that are top of mind for them.”
Along with nostalgia, the campaign focuses on the seven currently-for-sale shades of the iconic lip gloss, which all date back to the early 2000s. In just a few weeks, the brand will reveal new shades of the franchise.
Collab of the week: Heaven Mayhem x Freja team for bags + charms
Two “it” girl brands — Heaven Mayhem, known for its vintage-inspired jewelry, and Freja, known for its minimalist vegan bags — have collaborated on a capsule collection featuring two bags and two bag charms. The bag charms play on the shape of Heaven Mayhem’s popular Julia Necklace, and the bags put new textural plays on Freja’s popular Mini Chrystie silhouette, an East-West style.
Heaven Mayhem, according to founder Pia Mance, is “striving to be the leading brand in the accessories category” and thought Freja would be the perfect partner to enter the bag category. “Its aesthetics, ethos and community overlap considerably [with our own],” she said. Heaven Mayhem has done collaborations before, for instance, working with fellow jewelry brand Real Fine Studio on a lab-grown moissanite tennis bracelet.
For Freja, however, the collab is a first. “We see so many girls wearing both Freja and Heaven Mayhem,” said Freja founder Jenny Lei. “So, we knew it would be something special for the girls who love both brands. … This collaboration represents a unique blend of both brands’ perspectives.”
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