To kick off 2024, skin care tools brand NuFace has launched a campaign dubbed “Fitness for Your Face,” which celebrates a new 20-minute face “workout,” dubbed the “10/10,” treatment, that was released on its app on January 10. The same day, the brand hosted a one-day, 10-city “tour,” during which top-of-their-field estheticians provided facials to mega-influencers.
The idea was inspired by the growth in users of the brand’s app. It has been downloaded 171,000 times since debuting in August 2022, including 145,000 times in 2023 alone. NuFace owed the accelerated growth to new interest in microcurrent technolofy.
2023 was a fruitful year for NuFace sales, too. From the third quarter to the fourth quarter, the brand saw a 135% increase in units sold across the business and a 135% growth in revenue. According to November 2023 data from Circana, NuFace is the No. 1-selling skin-care tool brand.
“So, from a marketing standpoint, we wanted to kick off the year with a new treatment and highlight our hero device,” said Melissa Sgaglione-Seganti, NuFace’s avp of content and communications, referencing NuFace’s Trinity+ Complete tool. As a tools brand, NuFace cannot release products as fast as topical skin-care brands, Sgaglione-Seganti said, so — to continue its growth trajectory in 2024 — the company opted to answer its customers’ demand for content and treatments. That demand was communicated through interviews with its most active app users.
NuFace has also found that there is a customer appetite for education about both the benefits of its hero microcurrent technology and the right ways to use its three key microcurrent devices — the Trinity+ Complete is its most comprehensive and expensive, at $495. The NuFace app currently guides users through 14 treatments, and the brand is aiming to add 10 more tutorials by the end of the year. Through the app, the brand is creating an “on-demand esthetician to service its clients,” Sgaglione-Seganti said.
“[NuFace’s clients] want to ‘get the look,’ but in skin care,” said Tera Peterson, co-founder and CEO of NuFace. “They’re asking, ‘How do I get the lifted eyebrows?’ ‘How do I get the popped cheeks?’ ‘How do I get the defined jawline?'” NuFace’s content aims to address those questions, she said.
The new 10/10 treatment uses all three of the attachment heads provided with the Trinity+ Complete, with users instructed to do 10 minutes of a microcurrent treatment followed by 10 minutes of an LED light treatment. These two technologies are “complementary building blocks to get to our ultimate skin health,” Peterson said.
On January 10, in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Miami, West Palm Beach, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago and the brand’s home base of San Diego, NuFace treated influencers to treatments that were longer, more luxe takes on its at-home 10/10, or “10 out of 10,” workout. The estheticians providing the treatment included the biggest names in the business: Shani Darden in Los Angeles, Joanna Czech in Dallas, Sofie Pavitt in New York City and Tammy Fender in West Palm Beach, to name a few. The invited influencers included Madi Webb (2.5 million TikTok followers), Emira D’Spain (1.3 million TikTok followers) and Lauren Wolfe (1.1 million TikTok followers). During the day, the brand provided 100 total facials.
What was perhaps most notable about this “tour” was the fact that the brand leaned into its relationships to confirm its partners. Its primary investment was the cost of gifting around 100 Trinity+ Complete devices to the participating influencers. The brand had previously built relationships with most of the included partners — Peterson knows the esthetician world well, having worked as an esthetician for 22 years. Darden was the face of NuFace’s holiday campaign in 2016.
Even though it did not pay the influencers, “we offered them a luxury experience with a top esthetician — they wanted to come,” Sgaglione-Seganti said. And the participating estheticians benefit from being tagged in the influencers’ content.
“We wanted the energy of activating [in many cities] on one day to allow our clients to participate virtually,” Sgaglione-Seganti said. And, ideally, fans and followers of the estheticians and influencers will become familiar with NuFace and inspired to shop the brand, she said.
Later this month, on January 22, NuFace will also virtually host a 10-day “Fitness for Your Face” challenge, which will be promoted on its Instagram (308,000 followers). Throughout the 10 days, it will encourage owners of its devices to access various treatment tutorials available on the app, which will guide them through different processes and encourage them to use the device.
