Are We Selling Beauty Or Delivering A Masterclass In Branding?

The beauty world has been exploding lately with products that promise miracles. But if we’re being honest, the real overachiever isn’t the serum or the lipstick, it’s the marketing. Campaigns are working overtime, transforming simple products into main characters and turning Instagram feeds into glossy dreamscapes.
It’s wild how the same carefully polished ads that once quietly shaped our beauty standards are now being dissected in comment sections everywhere. Some of these campaigns are so aesthetically perfect they make my Pinterest boards look like a rough draft.

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Beauty Branding is So Good Right Now; I’m Taking Notes

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Each time I open LinkedIn, there is some budding marketing professional breaking down a brand’s branding strategy, and gladly I am their target audience, going through that entire carousel and reading their analysis on branding because it’s actually cool, and it was high time brands actually sold stories more than their products. Maybe that’s why homegrown brands are everywhere right now, selling not just products but full-blown experiences that make you want to try, post and talk about them.

If you’d asked me 3 years ago, fresh out of high school, I would not have cared this much about what beauty brands were up to. The only branding that spoke to me was television commercial ads, and that too was for food and beverage and sometimes clothes. Little did I know that soon beauty would venture into multi-sensory marketing like never before and sell not just products but a desire through outdoor campaigns that feel less like a lipstick ad and more like a Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham-level set design.

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Marketing Has an Instagram Accent Now

2026 is the new 2016, everyone seems to think, except it's really not in the beauty space. Sure, some pop culture moments have officially made a comeback, and Justin Bieber is on my Spotify once again, but marketing never looked this appealing up until last year. Lately the market has seen a rise in creator-led brands. A-listers aren't just ambassadors anymore; they are the whole damn brand in themselves. Hailey Bieber, in an interview, quoted, "I am Rhode, and Rhode is me." And that, my friend, is the new beauty marketing gospel that seems to be doing really well for certain brands lately.

We're currently living in an era where user-generated content is being used as ads because we're not watching ads anymore but real experiences and reviews of people and not even influencers. Instagram was once an app like Facebook made for sharing photos and staying well connected with friends, and here we are using this app as our holy grail for influencer marketing and UGC ads, and beauty brands have made full use of it.

Brands That Taught Marketing Better Than My Professor:

Fenty

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The hype came with Rihanna’s name, but Fenty’s shade inclusivity kept them hooked. She turned her own frustration with the beauty industry into a brand born out of sheer concern for women who couldn't find what they needed in the 'existing makeup'. She made thousands of women feel seen with the range of shades her brand had to offer. She targeted the core issue with inclusivity in beauty and started a cultural movement within, and if that isn't intelligent marketing, I don't know what else is.

Inde Wild

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The Tyla concert reel went viral across TikTok and Instagram for a reason. It truly showed the world what “Indian baddies” are. This brand made sure everyone was talking about it. A modern, science-led brand enriched with ancient Indian Ayurvedic ingredients, it knew how to sell old Indian rituals rooted in our culture to the masses, not just in India but globally. The brand chose a community-led approach, making consumers a part of everything they did and placing Indian Ayurveda on a stage that actually made it cool.

Gisou

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If multisensory marketing had a face, then Gisou would be it. From those warm, fall-coded browns to the honeycomb launch, it felt like the brand knew exactly how to make beauty feel desirable before it was even mainstream. It's skincare that you would want to eat and drench yourself in. They sold desire like you would sell ice cream to a 10-year-old and lived up to its hype too.