Rare Beauty — Mental Health 101 Campaign Review
Abstract
Rare Beauty is a cosmetic company founded by famous singer, songwriter, and actress Selena Gomez. Being a prominent corporate entity known to support mental health initiatives, the brand launched its Mental Health 101 campaign in recognition of May’s Mental Health Awareness Month and to build momentum leading up to Mental Health Action Day. Through this campaign, the brand’s initiative is to engage communities about mental health support and awareness and increase financial support of services in the educational setting by raising money for their Rare Impact Fund and gaining signatures for their Mental Health 101 petition. After reviewing the campaign’s social media strategies and success, Rare Beauty generated the most content and engagement through the social media site Instagram when compared to the other platforms. Additionally, the brand missed opportunities to increase its reach and engagement through its insufficient content on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Overall, the social media campaign successfully generated over 60,000 signatures for their Mental Health 101 petition, reaching over $82,000 in donations for their Rare Impact Fund and bringing awareness to the mental health-related issues in the Gen Z community.
Keywords: Rare Beauty, Mental Health 101 Campaign, Social Media, Engagement
Introduction
Rare Beauty was founded in 2020 by famous public figure, Selena Gomez. Offering a full line of unique, light, and airy formulated cosmetics, the brand has set out to be more than just a cosmetic company but an entity that drives meaningful impact in redefining society’s impossible beauty standards (PRNewswire, 2020). Rare Beauty believes it is important to celebrate one’s individuality through its products and embrace the imperfections that makes one rare. According to Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez, the brand’s mission statement states:
“Our vision is to create a safe, welcoming space in beauty — and beyond — that supports mental well-being across age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, cultural background, physical or mental ability, and perspective (2020).”
Additionally, Rare Beauty is an active mental health advocate. Before its brand launch, Selena Gomez created the Rare Impact Fund to raise money to increase access to mental health resources and address these services’ gaps in underserved communities (Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez, 2020). With 1% of each sale going towards the fund, Rare Beauty has made it its goal to raise $100 million over ten years, making it the largest known corporate entity to support mental health (Saleh, 2021).
Apart from the Rare Impact Fund, the brand launched its Mental Health 101 Campaign to recognize May’s Mental Health Awareness month. Acknowledging that suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst the Gen Z community, with only 16% of children receiving mental health assistance in school, Rare Beauty’s initiative behind this campaign is to increase the presence of mental health education early on in a child’s life (Castro & Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez, 2021). Through the Mental Health 101 campaign, the company proposed efforts to empower conversation within communities and increase financial support services for this cause. Additionally, Rare Beauty aimed to raise donations through their Rare Impact Fund and gain signatures for their petition to mitigate the mental health crisis by providing mental health services in schools. Overall, the campaign worked towards highlighting Mental Health Action Day.
Campaign
Rare Beauty is present on various social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The brand has utilized these platforms and tools to promote its Mental Health 101 campaign by sharing information about the importance of including mental health early in a child’s education. By employing social media as their primary source of communication and based on the brand’s mission statement, Rare Beauty’s target audience is between 16–35 years of age and appeals to all ages, gender identities, sexual orientations, races, cultural backgrounds, physical and mental abilities. Additionally, their audience is primarily located in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as the brand had not yet expanded globally.
Under each social media post for their Mental Health 101 campaign, Rare Beauty included a 3 step action statement for their followers to participate within the campaign being 1. To sign the Mental Health 101 petition, 2. Donate to the Rare Impact Fund and 3. To share the post & tag a friend. Included in almost each campaign post was the number to the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline and the hashtag #MentalHealth101. Additionally, followers and organizations were granted access to Rare Beauty’s Mental Health 101 Social Toolkit to share the campaign’s efforts. The platform with the most followers and engagement for Rare Beauty is Instagram, trailed by TikTok and Twitter.
Rare Beauty has generated the most content and social media engagement through Instagram compared to any other platform. With over 2 million followers and posting diverse and consistent content, the platform has been promising for Rare Beauty’s reach and engagement. For their Mental Health 101 Campaign, the brand utilized most of Instagram’s features, including a total of 10 feed posts, four IGTV’s, one highlight, and 29 stories with a total of 44 Instagram-based posts for their May campaign. The brand’s Instagram posts included various infographics highlighting mental health statistics and driving awareness of the issue. The IGTV feature housed the brand’s Mental Health 101 Speaker Series, where organizations hosted zoom meetings to discuss the importance of mental health access and treatment at the educational level. The Mental Health 101 Instagram highlight includes the campaign’s story posts, links to their petition and fund, news articles on the campaign’s efforts, and an itinerary for the IGTV Speaker Series.
Twitter & TikTok
Rare Beauty used Twitter to post general tweets, retweets, mentions, and thread posts for their Mental Health 101 campaign. With a total of 86,800 followers, the brand included 13 posts revolving around their campaign with half of the posts being links to sign the Mental Health 101 petition. General tweets included similar infographic media shared on Instagram but formatted to Twitter. Additionally, Rare Beauty included a link to their Mental Health 101 website in their Twitter bio and did not utilized videos, gifs, polls, or fleets for their campaign.
On Tik Tok, the brand currently has 334,700 followers and posted a total of two TikToks highlighting their Mental Health 101 campaign. The first video includes a short scene of someone typing the question “What if mental health was taught in school.” The second post is a short video outlining the campaign’s initial launch, it’s importance to the brands cause, and links to their petition, fund, and website. Included in the caption was the initiative that Rare Beauty would match donations to the Rare Impact Fund. The hashtags included on TikTok were slightly different being #MentalHealthAwarness, #MentalHealth101, and #rarebeauty.
Facebook & LinkedIn
On Facebook, Rare Beauty currently has a following of over 44,200 followers. For their Mental Health 101 Campaign, they shared four newsfeed posts similar to their Instagram and Twitter campaign posts. Each post was a mental health statistic with action oriented captions to get their followers to join the momentum of advocating for mental health education in school. Additionally, Rare Beauty utilized the platform LinkedIn to highlight the start of their Mental Health 101 campaign. With over 27,500 followers, the brand included a total of two feed posts — one displaying multiple infographic images, identical to the media shared via Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The second post was a screenshot of a statement from Selena Gomez herself explaining the relevance and importance of the campaign. Overall, LinkedIn was utilized to demonstrate the company’s initiatives apart from being a brand that sells beauty products .
Campaign Engagement
Rare Beauty’s focal campaign post was a six image infographic communicating mental health statistics, the brand’s initiative behind the campaign, and ways for their followers to engage with the cause. Upon examining the post across each platform, the content was shared similarly on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, while on Twitter, it was posted as a thread, and on TikTok, it was shared as a short video. In assessing this media’s performance amongst the different platforms showed that Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok had the highest reach and engagement in comparison to Facebook and LinkedIn which received the least.
Instagram, Facebook, & LinkedIn
On Instagram, Rare Beauty shared this infographic post as a carousel, while Facebook and LinkedIn shared it as a collage feed post. Each post included the same hashtags, links, and action statement within the caption. Receiving the most engagement on this specific post was Instagram, with over 20,000 likes and 217 comments. Facebook and LinkedIn both received the least amount of engagement compared to all the platforms on this specific post with a combined 698 reactions, 6 comments, and 83 shares.
Twitter and TikTok
On Twitter, the brand shared the same post as a thread to highlight each photo and include information on where followers could take action. The post had 9,225 likes, 2,274 retweets, and 79 comments. On TikTok, Rare Beauty posted a short video including a screen recording of the infographics, the Rare Impact Fund donation page, and the Mental Health 101 petition. Instead of including the same caption as the other platforms for this specific post, Rare Beauty decided to mention that they would be matching $200,000 in donations during the month of May to the Rare Impact Beauty Fund. The post totaled 3,698 likes, 63 comments, and 40 shares.
The audience that interacted with these campaign posts from each platform included females and males between, 16–35 years of age. Additionally, viewers showed an overwhelming amount of support in applauding the makeup brand for its dedicated efforts in addressing mental health issues. Many commenters agreed on the initiative for mental health education in the early years of childhood. Additionally, some commenters even shared their personal stories of struggling with mental health as a child and how impactful it would have been to have learned about the subject early on in school.
Results & Discussion
Rare Beauty’s Mental Health 101 Campaign had many successes through its platform utilization, more specifically on Instagram. Posting consistently on the platform and providing diverse content through stories, IGTV’s, highlights, and feed posts allowed for the campaign’s message to be interpreted through different media types. Utilizing the Mental Health 101 hashtag on all their social media posts created a space where users could see the campaign’s efforts and use the hashtag themselves to promote it. Allowing followers to access and utilize the Mental Health 101 Social Toolkit was a great way to not only spread the initiative but give their followers a sense of belonging to the campaign.
Additionally, hosting a Mental Health 101 Speaker Series was a great utilization of IGTV. It allowed for organizations and speakers to address the issues at hand and suggest ways of improving mental health wellbeing within their communities. Linking the Mental Health 101 petition and Rare Impact Fund within the caption of each campaign post across all platforms allowed the audience to raise money and awareness for the cause. With Mental Health Action Day marking the end of the campaign, the brand attained over 60,000 signatures for their Mental Health 101 petition, raised over $82,000 in donations for their Rare Impact Fund, and collectively generated over 300,000 social engagements across all platforms, signifying its success.
Failure within the campaign’s strategy can be seen in the lack of content provided across TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Since Rare Beauty’s next most significant following is on TikTok, the brand missed an opportunity to develop additional posts for this platform to engage their audience. For example, TikTok content could have been generated to highlight Rare Beauty’s IGTV Mental Health 101 Speaker Series as a short video delivering a powerful message. In addition, personal stories from students, teachers, and parents could have been curated in driving an emotionally sparked campaign that would coincide with the dire need of mental health education in schools.
On Twitter, the brand posted the link to the Mental Health 101 petition on Mental Health Awareness Day a total of five times, which consisted of most of its campaign media on this platform. Rare Beauty could have utilized this platform to spark meaningful conversations amongst the community and make their Mental Health 101 hashtag trend. Below is an example of how the beauty brand could have utilized Twitter’s poll feature to spark conversation amongst followers for the Mental Health 101 campaign:
With the focus of raising donations for their Rare Impact Fund and gaining signatures for their Mental Health 101 petition, the brand would have benefited from additional content on Facebook and LinkedIn. These platforms are gauged more towards working adults, with Facebook appealing to 25–35-year-olds and LinkedIn appealing to 46–55-year-olds who have the means to donate (McLachlan, 2021; Tran, 2020). Additionally, Facebook and LinkedIn house many communities and organizations with similar mental health initiatives, such as Mental Health America (MHA), Real Warriors, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). This would have increased the campaign’s reach and engagement amongst communities geared towards bettering mental health outcomes, coinciding with the brand’s campaign initiative and petition.
At the onset of the campaign, the brand issued a message from Rare Beauty’s founder Selena Gomez stating the personal tie she has to this campaign when facing her own mental health related difficulties as a child. This post gained the most engagement across all channels because of its emotional nature from a public figure and successful company. Following posts received successful but lower engagement compared to the initial campaign post due to the lack of that personal essence. The brand could have benefitted from utilizing an emotional lead by incorporating user-generated content through their Mental Health 101 hashtag from individuals who experienced mental health-related issues.
Conclusion
After evaluating Rare Beauty’s Mental Health 101 campaign, I learned how impactful a company’s initiatives could be in driving positive change through a social media presence. Seeing the donations raised for their Rare Impact Fund, the number of signatures for the Mental Health 101 petition, and the increased awareness and conversation amongst leaders, organizations, and the community was incredibly eye-opening. Witnessing the outpouring support for this campaign due to its nature showed me that viewers crave authenticity within a brand. Additionally, I have gained a greater sense of respect for the beauty brand as many companies lack advocacy for mental health initiatives.
Furthermore, I have learned how important it is to optimize each platform to produce effective messaging and engagement. By examining the brand’s lack of campaign presence on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn highlighted to me that there is always room to improve a brand’s social media strategies when conducting an online campaign. Additionally, I learned that remaining consistent and diverse on each platform is vital in producing successful results from social media and when considering the initiative behind a campaign, it’s essential to think about each platform’s audience and what can be utilized to further reach and engagement. Overall, my understanding and comprehension of social media campaigns and strategies has expanded through the review of Rare Beauty’s Mental Health 101 campaign.
References
Castro, M. & Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez. (2021, April 26). Introducing Mental Health 101. Rare Beauty. https://www.rarebeauty.com/blogs/news/mental-health-101
McLachlan, S. (2021, January 20). 27 Facebook Demographics to Inform Your Strategy in 2021. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-demographics/
PRNewswire. (2020, August 31). Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty Launches First Line of Beauty Products in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico Exclusively at Sephora on September 3. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/selena-gomezs-rare-beauty-launches-first-line-of-beauty-products-in-the-us-canada-and-mexico-exclusively-at-sephora-on-september-3-301121160.html
Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez. (2020, September 3). About. Rare Beauty. Retrieved June 20, 2021, from https://www.rarebeauty.com/pages/about
Rare Beauty By Selena Gomez. (2020, July 22). Rare Impact Fund. Rare Beauty. Retrieved June 20, 2021, from https://www.rarebeauty.com/pages/rare-impact-fund
Saleh, Z. (2021, May 2). Selena Gomez Launches Mental Health Initiative to Empower the Youth with Helpful Resources. Vogue Arabia. https://en.vogue.me/beauty/selena-gomez-mental-health-101/
Tran, T. (2020, June 23). Top LinkedIn Demographics That Matter to Social Media Marketers. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/linkedin-demographics-for-business/
