【Case Briefing】

LA MER was promoting their new cushion product in China in May and chose the Meitu App as their partner, using its AR technologies to create a scenario-based experience for users and to promote the concept of “12-hour long-lasting makeup-as-essence effect”. Meanwhile, the Meitu App gave full play to its advantages as a community with a large user base, displaying the brand TVC on its homepage, launching topics in the community news feed, and promoting the product through community influencers to further enhance brand awareness and reputation, which has turned out to have become a benchmark for cosmetic brand marketing. 

【Challenges】

1. While AR promotion was new for LA MER, it was even more difficult to fully display the effect of a foundation product using AR effects. We needed to find the most suitable solution for displaying the product while sticking to brand’s tone.

2. Regular hard sell methods failed to meet the brand’s demands to both increase product exposure and improve user experience. We needed to discover a new method tailored to the brand’s identity to make the marketing more successful.

【Goals】

1. To make the product the first choice for urban females. 

2. To promote the brand concept of “luxury maintenance for flawless skin”.

【Strategies】

1. Hard sell exposure (video card) on the Meitu App homepage.

2. Launch the #LAMERSOFTFLUIDCUSHION topic in the community to draw platform-wide attention.

3. Create a high-quality time-lapse AR effect to draw more participants.

4. KOLs make promotional posts to increase brand awarenessamong their fans. 

【 Highlights】

1. Unprecedented exposure covering all user scenarios: Display brand TVC on the video card on the Meitu App’s homepage; splash screen ads in the five Meitu software products (the Meitu App, BeautyCam, Meipai, MakeupPlus and SelfieCity); and promotion in the community news feed. 

2. Customized AR effects displaying brand philosophy and product application scenarios: AR effects themed “12-hour sustained beauty”are designed with different lighting effects for four different periods of the day with corresponding makeup looks (eg. early morning sunlight effect + fresh makeup, hot sunlight effect + delicate makeup, and night light effect + captivating makeup). Each one of them displays the user’s unchanging beauty.

【Actions】 

1. Hard-sell exposure: On May 1^st, the brand TVC was displayed on the Meitu App video card, the splash screen of five Meitu products, and the news feed to attract user attention and increase product exposure on a large scale. 

2. The #LAMERSOFTFLUIDCUSHION topic page: Trending searches and featured topic slots were arranged to increase product exposure and channel traffic, attracting active and target groups in a timely manner.

3. Customized AR effects created scenarios for users to experience the product: AR effects were designed with different lighting effects for four different periods of the day and corresponding makeup looks (eg. early morning sunlight effect + fresh makeup, hot sunlight effect + delicate makeup, and night light effect +captivating makeup). Each one of them displays the user’s unchanging beauty.

4. KOL promotion: KOLs in the Meitu App community promoted the brand among their fans by using the AR effects, writing graphic introduction articles and adding links to brand topics in the article to redirect fans to the brand’s site, thereby creating a marketing closed loop.

【 Achievements】

The AR effects provided an immersive experience for users and the KOLs’ content generation introduced the product in detail, which jointly deepened users’ understanding of product functionality and raised brand awareness and reputation to users.

1. Hard sell ads effectively increased brand awareness: Total exposure achieved 140 million views, with a completion rate of 107%. There were 2.07 million total clicks, with a completion rate of 353%.

2. AR effects enhanced the “luxury maintenance for flawless skin”concept: AR usage achieved about 35 million times with a usage rate of 121.7%. The completion rates of exposure and download both reached over 121%. The brand’s high-end reputation and philosophy have been widely accepted and acknowledged by users.