Sephora Canada

The Objective

Solidifying Sephora’s position as the beauty gifting destination for the holidays

With more than 340 carefully curated brands available at sephora.ca and across 103 stores in Canada, Sephora is a leader in prestige omni-retail. Sephora Canada looked to TikTok to help keep the brand top-of-mind as the beauty gifting destination for Canadians during the busiest time of the year: the holiday season. TikTok has a strong community of engaged and active beauty lovers, and for many of them, the platform has become their trusted source for holiday shopping discovery and inspiration. Making the For You page the ideal place to engage Sephora’s target audience and increase awareness of the breadth of gifts available in-store and online.

The Solution

Adding Sephora gifts to the top of shoppers’ wish-lists

To get into the festive spirit, Sephora wrapped up a cross section of Tik Tok’s advertising solutions to drive impact— Hashtag Challenge, Branded Effect, Creators, TopView, TopFeed & In-Feed Video— to create an entertaining and joyful experience that showcased the wide-assortment of gifts available at Sephora, all while being authentic to the platform.

Sephora called upon all holiday gift-givers to engage with a unique Branded Hashtag Challenge, #SephoraGiveOrKeep, which invited users to get inspired with thoughtful gifting ideas and co-create one-of-a-kind content. To encourage even more engagement, the brand treated users with a chance to win Sephora gift cards for their participation. In addition, Sephora designed a Branded Effect from a TikTok-first lens, tapping into how users are already organically using effects on the platform to draw inspiration and increase the likelihood of success. Both the campaign’s Branded Effect and Branded Hashtag Challenge were promoted via a TopView takeover. As TikTok's largest billboard, TopView allowed Sephora to breakthrough, showing up as the first video users see when they open the app. Finally, the brand also promoted its videos using TopFeed and In-Feed Ads, to connect with their target demographic utilizing a Reach and Frequency objective.

For the creative, Sephora embraced developing native-feeling assets by utilizing creators as holiday helpers. The beauty retailer partnered with TikTok’s Creator Managed Service Partner (MSP), TikTal, to collaborate with several well-known beauty & lifestyle creators such as @seananthony, @makeupbyalissiac, @itsgurnaz, @onlinekyne, and @beingjulia to develop authentic content. The creator-led videos featured the recognizable personalities taking part in the challenge and using the effect, which showcased branded bags revealing unique gift ideas, and allowed them to share the products that were on their own wish-list with the community. TikTok users had the ability to engage, play, and discover their own personal gift wish-list, providing an opportunity to drive content-based purchase decisions.

Finally, Sephora ran a brand lift study with questions that were specific to the products being featured in the Branded Effect to track overall ad recall and effectiveness.

The Results

Winning over the holiday season with gift-givers

It’s no secret that TikTok’s community of 1B+ shoppers are turning to the platform to be inspired by seasonal shopping moments. With #SephoraGiveOrKeep, Sephora added their own spin to the holiday conversation by tapping into trend signals and gifting the community with a fun campaign that strengthened the brand's position as the number one destination for holiday shopping, while reinforcing the power of building strong partnerships with creators.

By developing a Branded Hashtag Challenge and Branded Effect that allowed for personalization and unique storytelling, #SephoraGiveOrKeep surpassed benchmarks across multiple metrics, including successfully reaching over 23% of Canadians (10.6M in unique reach) and achieving an incredible 215.7M video views. Partnering with well-known creators from beauty and beyond to reach new audiences and inspire user engagement, allowed Sephora’s campaign to encourage over 203,000 video creations by over 80,000 different creators— all while garnering a notable 13.1% Engagement Rate. And if that’s not enough, their TopView takeover also significantly surpassed video view benchmarks by +12% and CTR benchmarks by +23%, confirming that creator and TikTok-first content are highly effective at retaining user’s attention and driving engagement.

Finally, by ensuring that all videos included integrated brand queues off the top, Sephora’s creatives proved to be a significant contributor to increasing brand recall, seeing a noteworthy lift of +13% for Ad Recall. What a merry win!