Fenty and Kylie and Morphe, Oh My!

This year, I am enrolled in a PR writing course as a part of my public relations degree program. As part of this course, I am given the opportunity to choose a hypothetical client to complete PR projects for. Since I have been a big fan of makeup since seventh grade, I decided that the brand I wanted to work on is Rihanna's beauty brand, Fenty Beauty.

Since stepping into the makeup arena, Rihanna has consistently changed the standards of the beauty community. With their first product launch, Fenty released a foundation with a whopping 50 shade options, making it one of the largest shade ranges in the beauty community. Since then, other beauty brands have tried to follow this same example to be more inclusive for various skin tones. The Fenty website really works well to showcase this new standard. They have a very diverse set of models and influencers that show off their products as well as being proof that Fenty is working to fulfill Rihanna's goal for the brand. The website is also easy to navigate for consumers, where anything they could potentially want to view on the website is only a couple clicks away.

As far as their media presence, Fenty's social media seems to be pretty run of the mill. They get a decent amount of engagement from their followers, but compared to the number of followers they have, I think they could do more to interact with a wider audience. The tweets their followers seem to interact with most are either their new product launches or when they use pop culture references, or memes, to reply to Twitter users.

When it comes to Instagram and Facebook, they fall right in line with the content of their Twitter as far as the original content goes. Those timelines are both full of product launches and relatable pop culture references as well. I don't think it is a bad thing to carry over posts between social media platforms, because that can help to communicate the brand throughout; however, when every single post is shared on all three platforms, there is nothing encourage someone to stop and engage with multiple platforms.

Morphe Brushes

When it came to looking for competitors of Fenty's brand, the first company that popped into my mind was Morphe Brushes. Since their launch in 2008, Morphe has been working to consistently create high quality makeup of a lower price, so it would be accessible to more people. They started creating artist-quality brushes and later discovered the demand for similarly priced quality eyeshadow. Their brushes and eyeshadow are not the reason I viewed them as a Fenty competitor, though. At the beginning of the year, Morphe launched its first ever foundation range with a grand total of 60 shades. Sounds familiar right? While Fenty doesn't solely own the rights to product launches with large shade ranges, it seemed very interesting to me that Morphe laughed their large range around the same time that Fenty was set to release the long-awaited line of concealers.

All the speculations aside, Morphe's website seems messy to me. When I come to the homepage, my eyes don't know where to look as I just keep scrolling and scrolling through foundations, pallets, brushes, influencers photos, collaborations, and so much more. I think it speaks volumes to the diverse brand that Morphe has worked to create as far as products go; however, the page just seems like a disorganized jumble of everything they are working on. The drop down menus at the top can help to navigate the website, but even then, each drop down menu has separate pop-up menus I have to scroll through to get to the product I actually want to see. The website is useable and allows customers to find products, but I think so much could be done to simplify the process.

Morphe's social media took me some time to unpack. Their Twitter account can seem unfocused at times, and then way too focused at others. Around the time of the Grammy's Morphe began tweeting along with the show to (I assume) appear relatable to their audience. To me, it just seemed odd and awkward and their followers seemed to agree, as each post got significantly less engagement than they are normally used to. Before the Grammy's, Morphe released ad collaboration with Jeffree Star, a beauty influence with his own makeup line. While it is good for the brand to post about the collaboration to increase interest in it, the seven posts in a row all look exactly the same. Morphe takes a bit of a different approach when it comes to Instagram. All of their content comes from influencers that use their products to create stunning beauty looks. As far as I can tell, none for the past 15 photos posted have been content they have created themselves. This is an interesting strategy to take, because it shows that influencers are using and enjoying their makeup products, or at the very least, they are able to create incredible makeup looks using their products.

MAC Cosmetics

The second brand I chose to look at as a competitor of Fenty is MAC Cosmetics. MAC is one of the most iconic and well-known makeup brands out there. Because of this, they are basically a competitor to any makeup brand. Like Morphe, MAC has spread their brand to a large variety of products, however, their website is much easier to navigate. They still have a lot going on, but the design is very sleek and way less overwhelming. Their dropdown menus are also more organized and make it easier to find what you are looking for.

MAC's Twitter reminds me quite a bit of Fenty's. Both brands focus mainly on posting about product launches and using pop culture references. A main difference I see though is that MAC also has several retweets of different magazines and media sites that are consistently writing stories about them. The only time Fenty seems to be trending or mentioned quite a bit is focused around their new product launches. For MAC, they can find articles at any time that talk about them, and they are able to use those to further promote their brand.

MAC's Instagram focuses on showcasing their products by showing swatches and professional photos taken of models wearing the products. It utilizes different content from its Twitter and allows consumers to see the products in different ways. All of the photos on their Instagram seem to come from in-house, so they don't depend on influencers like Morphe does. MAC's Facebook seems to be a mix between their Twitter and Instagram content, with new posts appearing here as well. I think this is a strong social media strategy, because it encourage their followers and consumers to seek them out on all three platforms to view their content.

Kylie Cosmetics

The final competitor I chose to look at was Kylie Cosmetics. I chose this brand because, like Fenty, it is owned and run by a popular culture figure, Kylie Jenner. Launched in 2015, Kylie Cosmetics first focused on producing liquid lipstick kits. Since then, the brand has expanded to include eyeshadow pallets, blushes, highlighters, and so much more. Their website definitely showcases this, but maybe not in the way I would have done it. Like the other brands, their homepage shows highlights of new and best-selling products, but Kylie's website has so many more products listed. For a minute, I wasn't sure if I was still scrolling through the homepage, or if I had accidentally gotten to the products page somehow. Like Morphe's website, the whole thing just seems very cluttered and not as easy to navigate as it should be.

I feel like a broken record when saying this, because Kylie Cosmetics Twitter is basically dedicated to product launches and interacting with consumers that mention them. Their tweets are very promotional for their website and don't seem to stray from that much. Kylie Cosmetics' Instagram has a mix of professional content from the brand itself and influencer content showing them using the products. I think this is a smart strategy, because it allows the brand to showcase the products in the best way possible, and lets consumers see some of their favorite influencers use the same products they are interested in. This holds true for the Facebook content as well; a mix of influencer and original brand content.

Who has the best digital presence?

Of the brands I looked at, the one with the best online presence is... MAC Cosmetics!

MAC's overall brand is sleek and very professional, which is exactly what they display in their use of social media and online platforms. Almost everyone in the beauty community knows the MAC Cosmetics brand, and there is a definite reason why. Moving forward with the rest of this project, I will definitely be looking to MAC for more inspiration for the Fenty Beauty content I will be creating.