L'Oréal
|
France
The unedited campaign that made men’s skincare Real for Gen Z
Consideration
Balanced Reach
Share of Voice
👀
Impressions
🧠
Ad Recall
⚡️
CTR
THE BRIEF
Building awareness for a new men's skincare launch among skeptical Gen Z men
To launch its new Derma Control anti-imperfection serum, L'Oréal Men Expert needed to capture the attention of young men aged 18–35 in France to build strong top-of-mind awareness for the new skincare line.
In a category traditionally dominated by polished beauty advertising and highly retouched visuals, the challenge was to create a campaign that felt credible and relatable to a younger male audience increasingly skeptical of overproduced commercial messaging.
THE STRATEGY
A 1st 5 Impressions takeover combined with sustained Balanced Reach and creator content
L’Oréal Men Expert deployed a month-long campaign combining a 1st 5 Impressions takeover (owning the first 5 ad placements for users at app open) with a sustained Balanced Reach strategy built for maximum share of voice.
The creative strategy deliberately moved away from traditional beauty advertising aesthetics. Instead of polished product demonstrations, the campaign featured creators Djack, Romdgy and Malone sharing unretouched, real-time product application moments. The native executions embraced the platform’s raw visual language, allowing the product to appear as part of genuine skincare routines rather than as a heavily scripted advertising moment.
THE OUTCOME
Authenticity drove both awareness and consideration for Derma Control
The campaign delivered strong top-to-mid-funnel performance across both awareness and consideration metrics, generating 6.9 million total impressions. The 1st 5 Impressions takeover alone generated 4.1 million impressions with a 0.92% CTR, while the sustained Balanced Reach campaign added 2.8 million impressions and achieved an even stronger 1.02% CTR. Beyond engagement, the Brand Lift Study confirmed the campaign’s effectiveness on brand memorability and perception, delivering a +7-point uplift in ad recall alongside a +2-point increase in spontaneous familiarity for the Derma Control line, demonstrating that authenticity and transparency can be particularly powerful in the beauty category.
