Launched in 1998 and acquired by Estée Lauder Companies in 2016, Too Faced has seen its fair share of social media platforms and trends come and go. For its latest campaign, it’s leaning into long-form content, which it embraced years ago but hasn’t leveraged in quite a while.
For the campaign, which focuses on one of its hero products, the Born This Way Multi-Use Sculpting Super Coverage Concealer, the brand tapped creator Amanda McCants (959,000 TikTok followers and 533,000 Instagram followers), who it has worked with since 2022.
In the campaign’s four-minute video, McCants plays herself appearing on a podcast called “Tea With Too Faced,” where she’s asked to take a lie detector test to reveal whether she’s been honest about the secrets behind her flawless complexion. The host is Elyse Reneau, Too Faced’s executive director of global beauty.
The full version of the short film, available on the brand’s YouTube (263,000 subscribers), is nearly five minutes long. It will be spliced into shorter versions and posted to the brand’s Instagram and TikTok. In addition, it will be promoted on TikTok, Meta platforms, Pinterest and YouTube. The campaign launched on September 23 and will run through November 3.
This is not the brand’s first venture into long-form content. It has worked with creators including Kandee Johnson, Gigi Gorgeous, Mariale Marrero and Erika Jayne on YouTube content featuring other hero products like its Better Than Sex mascara. However, these videos are between six and nine years old.
The Super Coverage Concealer has become a phenomenon, presenting an opportunity for the brand to dabble in long-form content again, said Tara Simon, global brand president for The Estée Lauder Companies’ West Coast brands Too Faced and Smashbox. “It’s got a cult following,” she said. “And with the new travel size [launched in June], the brand has seen increased sales and buzz around the popular product. So we wanted to give it a little bit of love.” According to Simon, people are loyal to the product and use it in multiple ways, including to conceal, highlight and contour.
As reported by Circana, Super Coverage has seen a 34% increase in sales over the past year, which Simon attributed to the product being a “social darling” that shows an immediate impact in before-and-afters. Too Faced is among a small group of beauty brands to have reached over 1 million TikTok followers.
This campaign, however, should not be taken as a sign that the brand plans to move away from TikTok or Instagram, where it has another 12.6 million followers, Simon said.
Too Faced is not the only beauty brand to recently dabble in long-form content. In January, E.l.f. released a 15-minute mockumentary dubbed “Cosmetic Criminals.” It rolled out on social media and played before certain theater showings of the “Mean Girls” remake. And, timed to fashion week just a few weeks ago, body-care brand Eos partnered with designer Joe Ando to create a dress inspired by the brand’s body lotion. It then released a mini-documentary about the process.
Clayton Hawkins, who works with Olivia Rodrigo, did McCants and Reneau’s hair for the video; Alex French, who works with Katy Perry, was on makeup; and Tabitha Sanchez was the fashion stylist.
“To have these glam gods be there and to have an entire sketch from a billion-dollar company built around me, … I was fucking honored,” McCants said.
The idea for the campaign came from an in-house team of Too Faced employees. Simon declined to share the investment, only stating that the campaign was “not as expensive as you might think” as hiring an agency was not necessary.
As for whether Too Faced will continue to lean into long-form content, Simon said that will be dependent on the success of the “Tea With Too Faced” campaign.
