Beauty Kind College Tour

Beautykind College Tour

Incentives have the ability to significantly increase engagement at your event. BeautyKind did just that during their fall 2016 college tour. BeautyKind was able to strategically connect with their target demographic and significantly increase their engagement on social media throughout this campaign.

BeautyKind is an online makeup retailer; they donate 5% of their sales to a charity of the buyer’s choice. BeautyKind positioned themselves to be successful in this market of young women. Research has shown that individuals, millennials especially, like to support brands who gives back and embody the idea of corporate social responsible. In addition, giving the buyer the choice of where the money is going gives the buyer a sense of autonomy and a feeling of goodwill. In hopes of targeting their products specifically to college- aged women, they decided to begin a campaign visiting 12 colleges.  

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BeautyKind was positioned favorably, by targeting this demographic, especially in terms of incentivizing those individuals willing to engage.  College kids generally have a great deal of school pride and spirit, especially during football season, when the BeautyKind college tour took place.  College kids also love the word free and any giveaways they can be apart of.  

Beautykind's Impressive Engagement Tactic

Here's how they set up for each campus tour:

1. BeautyKind’s college tour simply asked students to post and hashtag their photos to #BeautyKind.  
2. Upon doing this, the attendees could collect their photo from the Photoboxx, show to a volunteer, and attendees would then receive a complimentary S’well water bottle with their school logo.  In addition to the complimentary S’well bottles, individuals were also given a $25 giftcard for BeautyKind.  This was a chance for many of the college- aged women to try any BeautyKind product with little or no risk.
3. BeautyKind found the perfect incentive for their target market, and was able to introduce their brand to those unaware. BeautyKind visited 12 college campuses, and was able to create lasting brand awareness.

There was an impressive turnout at each of the schools on the college tour.  However, some schools were much more responsive to the incentives that BeautyKind was offering.  The schools with the most engagement were University of Southern California with 1,561 posts, reaching 1,064,302 individuals, followed by University of North Carolina with 1,387 posts reaching 842,683.  Overall, the posts with the hashtag reached over 5.6 million individuals.  

Those attending the BeautyKind events on campus could hashtag and post their photos to either Instagram or Twitter.  Instagram proved to be the platform of choice, which is consistent with the targeted demographic trends.  A recent study shows that Twitter’s content is 52% sports related, 38% news and politics, leaving only 10% for entertainment; therefore, Twitter can be seen as a less personal platform than Instagram.  It is a great to have many social media platforms available for your attendees to post to, however, it’s important to be aware of your target market’s usage and trends.