CHALLENGE
The Middle East has a real love affair with beauty. With a category growing at double pace of global forecast and with an average of 41 lines being actively marketed all year round; needless to say, meaningful consumer connection is not a given.
INSIGHT
A beauty brand doesn’t just have to talk about appearances. Beauty is a sentiment that starts from within before making its way to the surface.
STRATEGY
BEAUTY THAT LAYS BEYOND
In the midst of this always-on beauty craze, MAC Cosmetics saw an opportunity to start a conversation that would go beyond skin-deep, a conversation that would resonate with culture while upholding the changing role makeup plays in our young consumers’ lives.
SOLUTION
Teaming up with Franco-Tunisian street-artist, eL Seed, known for his distinctive usage of Arabic calligraphy underpinning a message of peace and unity and recently awarded the UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture; the brand developed over the course of 2 years an exclusive collection that would shift the conversation from one of simple appearance to one that deepens the conversation on identity.
We started off by inviting 200 of the GCC’s most popular influencers to join us on our journey of self-discovery.
Guests were introduced to a bespoke art exhibit that was put together for one night and one night only. Alongside some of eL Seed’s most iconic art pieces our guests had access to discover never before seen sculptures extracted from his own personal collection.
Bridging the gap between the world of Art and Beauty, we turned eL Seed’s collaboration icon into a social media experience our guests would be excited to share as a piece of art that would come to life via a Snap Lens revealing our product.
This social experience made for the perfect introduction to the discovery of our entire collection. Guests were offered the opportunity to touch, play and try our line-up with some of the brand’s top make-up artists allowing deeper product exploration.
We designed our experience with Social Media front of mind: from full scale anamorphic art setups to a secret room ready to host the most extravagant poses, the possibilities to turn Instagram upside-down were endless.
Following our launch we created a custom in-store lens featuring face filters that allowed users to explore an infinite number of looks.
