Over the past few months we have seen a sizeable shift in high effort campaigns from some of the biggest brands in the world: Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and even British heritage brands such as Barbour have leaned in.
This is the pendulum swing, the knee-jerk reaction to AI ad-fatigue and low-effort influencer GRWM’s hiding undisclosed ads in plain sight.
As consumers we’re sick of feeling lied to: Generative AI pictures summoned from the ether with a half-conceptualised thought flood our screens and it has become increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what’s generated whilst new gimmicky products pop up in front of extended hands of influencers all over our feeds.
Ads now pepper every YouTube video, streaming service and unpaid app on your phone leading to an overwhelming sense of ad-fatigue which is only made worse by the feeling of being duped when you realise that the girl telling you green powders have saved her from feeling constantly bloated doesn’t actually have a stomach, instead she’s an amalgamation of pixels created with a single purpose: to sell.
In response, the biggest brands in the world have shifted their marketing strategy to show the one thing that AI can’t fake - human effort.
We’ve seen old school Disney animators take Dior, Chanel featuring scribbles of perfumes and bags scrawled by children of employees for Mother’s Day and the claymation universe of Wallace and Grommet take over Barbour's latest Christmas campaign.
This is ‘effort-maxing’ and it is taking over this year’s Christmas campaigns from almost all of the big fashion houses. But I’ve not seen this translate into beauty yet.
So here’s what I would do if I owned a beauty brand and I wanted to lean into this zeitgeist:
I would start with the artists, find a stylised portrait painter, someone who’s work has very clearly defined brushstrokes and I would commission them to paint a series of portraits with a new range of blendable cream formulas on canvas, whilst filming the process from start to finish a rich cinematic filming style that feels like you’ve stepped back in time to the richness of the nineteen-seventies.
Each portrait with a different skin tone to show off the shade range and the looks would sit somewhere between editorial and ‘dopamine-maxing’. Think bright colours, graphic-liner and artistry.
At the end, each portrait is translated onto a model’s face using the same products, with behind the scenes shots showing make-up artists using the palette to create each look.
The slogan:
We were made to create.
Then, to build upon this campaign and turn it into a culture instead of just an advert, I would set up a competition asking the audience to send in their most creative looks using the products and showcase the works at a live exhibition event where the winning looks get blown up onto large scale prints.
This leans into the current cultural movement away from online spaces and into real world meet-ups which are helping brands across the world expand their visibility and entice their consumers with something that feels genuine.
This campaign takes a simple makeup palette and turns it into a celebration of art, creativity and beauty which is exactly what your consumers are craving.
Katy Miles
Founder: Inkfluence Collective
All enquiries: katy@inkfluencecollective.com
