The Signature Lip Campaign
The Signature Lip Campaign is a full brand marketing strategy developed for MERIT Beauty, built around a single insight: the more natural a product promises to look, the harder it is to choose. What started as a lip liner launch became an identity restoration campaign.
Brand:
MERIT
Category:
Brand Marketing
The Research
The Business
MERIT is a minimalist beauty brand founded in 2021 by Katherine Power, built around the idea that beauty should be effortless, clean, and confidence-driven. The brand grew rapidly through community trust and social media rather than traditional celebrity marketing, and is now a defining name in the minimalist beauty movement.
Existing Marketing Campaigns
MERIT's campaigns center on simplicity, authenticity, and real life. Key campaigns include the Simmer Shadow Launch (soft, tactile visuals), The Five Minute Face Off (humor + relatability), The Minimalist 2026 (understated elegance), The Card Case (longevity + intentional design), immersive pop-ups like La Maison MERIT in Paris and The Five Minute Morning Café in Chicago, and selective fashion collaborations with Proenza Schouler, Completedworks, and Tove.
Secondary Research
To understand the broader beauty landscape and identify where MERIT fits within it, secondary research was conducted using industry reports, market data, and social media analytics. The goal was to map current consumer behavior, beauty trends, and discovery patterns before conducting any primary research.
What Was Done: Existing data was gathered from sources including McKinsey & Company, Statista, Euromonitor, Mintel, Circana, Grand View Research, TikTok for Business, Vogue Business, and various beauty industry publications. This research covered three key areas:
Current Beauty Trends
The research revealed a dual market emerging — while skin-first, minimal beauty ("skinimalism") remains dominant for everyday wear, full-glam and expressive looks are resurging for events and occasions. This confirms MERIT's role as an everyday essential brand rather than an occasion brand. Consumers are also increasingly ingredient-aware, prioritizing clean, transparent formulas and leaning toward brands that simplify rather than overwhelm.
Consumer Behavior & Preferences
Younger consumers, particularly millennials and Gen Z, are gravitating toward multi-use products and fast routines that fit into busy lifestyles. Beauty is increasingly tied to wellness and self-care rather than transformation, which aligns directly with MERIT's "impossible-to-mess-up" positioning. Shoppers are also showing growing skepticism toward overconsumption, favoring curated, intentional collections over large product ranges.
Where Customers Discover Beauty Brands
This was mapped out with estimated channel breakdowns based on platform and industry data:
TikTok — 30% of beauty discovery, driven by GRWM videos, short tutorials, and creator partnerships
Instagram — 25%, driven by influencer reels, brand ads, and aesthetic content
YouTube/Search — 20%, used primarily for longer tutorials, product reviews, and SEO-driven research before purchase
In-store/Retail — 15%, including Sephora displays and sampling, which still play a meaningful role in shade confidence and conversion
Word-of-Mouth — 10%, through friend recommendations and referral-driven discovery
Key Insights:
Social platforms dominate discovery but serve different purposes. TikTok and Instagram create awareness and desire, while YouTube and Google search drive evaluation and purchase intent. This means MERIT needs to show up early with short, visual, routine-based content and follow up with longer educational content to close the sale. In-store and word-of-mouth, while smaller channels carry outsized influence when it comes to shade selection and first-time purchase confidence, making Sephora placement and sampling strategies still very relevant. The data also reinforced that MERIT's minimal, fast-routine identity is perfectly timed with where consumer values are heading.
To go beyond industry data and understand real consumer behavior firsthand, three methods of primary research were conducted: in-depth interviews, store observations, and an ethnographic study. The goal was to understand how minimalist beauty consumers actually discover, evaluate, purchase, and use MERIT products in their daily lives.
Method 1: In-Depth Interviews
Two women representing MERIT's core customer were interviewed: Olga, 32, a communications consultant in Paris, and Alexia, 27, a financial analyst in Chicago. Despite different cities and careers, both shared nearly identical beauty habits. They want quick, reliable routines. They discover and validate products through TikTok and Instagram, then visit Sephora to test in person before buying online. They prioritize clean ingredients, natural finishes, and products that help them feel professional and confident, not products for self-expression or trend-following. For both women, makeup is a functional tool, not a creative one.
Method 2: Store Observation
A one-hour observation was conducted at Sephora, Brickell City Centre, Miami, on a Saturday afternoon. While bold brands attracted attention from afar, shoppers consistently spent more time with neutral, minimalist displays like MERIT's. Shoppers were deliberately reading labels, testing textures, and checking their phones mid-browse to validate choices with reviews or socials. Texture and blendability drove decisions far more than color payoff, and shade selection caused the most hesitation. Key opportunity identified: MERIT needs more in-store education through routine-building signage, shade guidance visuals, or QR codes linking to tutorials.
Primary Research
Method 3: Ethnographic Study
MERIT's Instagram comments were observed across multiple posts to understand how customers naturally talk about the brand. Positive sentiment was strong, and customers praised product longevity, packaging, and natural finish, with many describing MERIT as a daily essential they've used for months or years. Pain points included slow customer service response times, a desire for a wider range of shades, and limited representation of older women in campaign imagery. Customers also actively tag friends and suggest new products in comments, acting as organic brand ambassadors.
The Core Insight
Across all three methods, the same picture emerged. MERIT customers are not trend-driven; they are building a reliable, intentional beauty system. Once they find something that works, they stay loyal. They want to feel confident and polished with minimal time and effort, and they trust MERIT to deliver that consistently.
The Market
PESTLE Analysis
Three macro forces strongly favor MERIT: Socially, skinimalism and wellness-linked beauty are mainstream. Technologically, short-form video and social discovery favor simple, quick-application products. Environmentally, consumers expect intentional, low-waste beauty, which MERIT's curated, minimal packaging directly supports.
Competitor Matrix
MERIT sits in a unique position: the only brand combining a simple routine with a minimal/everyday aesthetic at a mid-range price point. Glossier is similar in routine simplicity but skews younger and more playful. Ilia focuses on clean performance with more complexity. Rare Beauty leans expressive and soft-glam. Kosas occupies a glowy-natural space with medium routine complexity. MERIT owns the "effortless everyday luxury" corner of the market.
Blue Ocean Canvas
Compared to traditional beauty brands, MERIT deliberately scores low on product volume, trend-driven launches, glam marketing, and bold pigmentation and scores near-perfect on ease of use, routine simplicity, skin-friendly formulas, everyday wearability, and a calm, curated brand aesthetic. This separation from industry norms is MERIT's competitive advantage.
The Marketing Strategy
MERIT built its reputation on the idea that beauty should be effortless, and for five years, that philosophy drove it to $200 million in retail sales without a single trend-driven launch. But research revealed a gap between the brand promise and the purchase experience. Customers who discovered MERIT, loved what it stood for, and were ready to buy were still walking away because choosing the right shade felt like too much of a risk, and caused decision fatigue. For a minimalist product, getting it wrong means looking like a version of yourself that does not quite feel like you. The Signature Lip Campaign was designed to close that gap. Built across four touchpoints, a personality-based shade quiz, creator storytelling, the Signature Edit pop-up in Brooklyn, and the Discovery Set, the campaign removes the pressure of choosing alone and replaces it with confidence. It does not launch a new product or chase a cultural moment. It solves a real problem that the brand's own customers were already experiencing, using research, restraint, and the same intentional thinking that made MERIT a brand worth loyalty in the first place.
MERIT grows through retention and word-of-mouth, not through promotions or trend cycles.
That means every customer lost at the point of discovery is lost brand equity with no recovery mechanism. Shade hesitation was the last barrier standing between awareness and purchase, and solving it wasn't just a conversion opportunity. It was the foundation of MERIT's entire growth model.
The Problem
Find Your Signature Lip is not a shopping campaign. It is an identity restoration campaign. Rather than pushing a product, it helps each customer find the shade that feels like her, removing the pressure of choosing alone and replacing decision fatigue with confidence.
The Campaign Idea
Four Touch Points. One Signature Shade
Every touchpoint was designed to remove the pressure of choosing the wrong shade and guide her toward the one that already belongs to her.
Digital — The Shade Quiz:
8 personality-based questions match her to the shade that already belongs to her. No skin tone charts, no overwhelming options, just a result that feels personal and a direct path to purchase. The Signature Lip Quiz lives on MERIT's website and matches each customer to her signature shade through eight personality-based questions, removing the pressure of choosing alone. It is designed to address shade hesitation at the digital point of discovery, before she ever enters a store or adds an item to her cart. At the end of the quiz, she receives her recommended shade and the reason it was chosen for her, and two options: add it to the cart directly or explore more shades through the Discovery Set.
Social — Creator Stories:
Creators share their own stories of how they found their signature lip and why, generating peer-driven discovery and cultural relevance without paid urgency or trend-chasing. The content is not a tutorial, a haul, or a before-and-after. It is a woman sitting in good light, telling you the shade she reaches for every single morning and why it feels like hers. That specificity is what makes it land. There is no pitch, no countdown, no limited edition urgency. Just someone who found her shade and wants you to find yours.
Product — The Discovery Set:
The Signature Discovery Set was designed for the customer who is not quite ready to choose. Three lip liners at $58, giving her room to explore, experiment, and find the shade that feels like hers before committing to just one. At $14 less than buying them individually, it is not a discount. It is an invitation.
Physical — The Signature Edit:
A three-day Brooklyn pop-up where a MERIT makeup artist gets to know her features and personality before recommending her shade. She leaves the chair knowing exactly which liner is hers.
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Duration: 3 days, Friday - Sunday
Entrance: The first thing she sees is The Signature Edit in matte gold letters framed by a sculptural flower installation and a curated product display. The space is quiet, warm, unhurried, but slightly editorial. It feels less like a beauty activation and more like somewhere she actually wants to be.
Makeup Artists: A MERIT makeup artist is there to give touch-ups and ask about her lifestyle, her features, and how she likes to feel when she leaves the house and is able to recommend a signature lip shade based on her answers. There is no pressure and no upselling. She leaves the chair knowing exactly which shade is hers.
Coffee Station: A calm corner with matcha, espresso, and pastries. Not a coffee shop inside a beauty pop-up but a reason to slow down, stay a little longer, and let the experience feel like a Saturday ritual rather than a transaction.
Personalized Cases: At the Build Your Case station, she chooses her case color, lining, and can add her name or initials stamped in gold. It is a small object, but it becomes the thing she reaches for every morning. A keepsake that carries the brand long after the activation ends.
Checkout: Clean, unhurried, and completely pressure-free. She purchases her recommended liner or the Discovery Set if she wants to keep exploring. The decision has already been made for her. This is just the moment she makes it official.
What She Leaves With: A cotton tote that says all things with intention in small letters. Inside, her signature shade or the Discovery Set, her personalized lip case, and a matcha still warm in her hand. She photographs it before she reaches the corner.
The campaign moves the customer through four stages over eight weeks:
Awareness is built through Instagram, paid social, email, and creators, where MERIT speaks with confidence and clarity rather than noise, introducing the campaign concept and building curiosity before anything is available to buy.
Consideration is deepened through PR, the website, the pop-up, and Sephora, where the focus shifts from grabbing attention to building trust and establishing credibility with a customer who is interested but not yet convinced.
Purchase happens through Sephora, the website, and the pop-up, where the experience is designed to be easy, familiar, and pressure-free, with the shade quiz and Discovery Set reassuring her that she is making the right choice.
Retention is sustained through Instagram, email, and a post-purchase gift-with-review program, where the goal is not to promote but to make her feel supported, recognized, and rewarded for staying loyal to a brand that does not rely on discounts to keep her coming back.
Channel Strategy
Conversion rate target:
Conversion rate target: 3 to 4% of website visitors and in-store browsers who engage with the campaign, converting into buyers. The Discovery Set directly removes shade hesitation, the single biggest barrier to purchase for minimalist beauty consumers, converting browsers who would otherwise leave the site or store without buying.
Social engagement target:
4 to 6% of total followers and campaign reach, engaging with campaign content through likes, comments, shares, and saves. Two elements drive this. The identity-based quiz invites active participation rather than passive scrolling, giving people a reason to engage before they have even bought anything. The Signature Edit pop-up gives attendees a reason to post, tag, and share for days after the activation ends, extending the campaign's reach organically through the people who experienced it firsthand.
Influencer reach target: 3 to 5 million impressions through micro and mid-tier creators who post multiple times across the eight-week campaign, chosen for audience trust over follower count. Discovery Set sales target: 10,000 units generating $580,000 in direct revenue, with a modeled total revenue of $820,000 when accounting for repeat liner purchases in the following year.
Every metric is thought not just to measure performance but to validate that MERIT's no-promotion, no-urgency strategy is a growth model, not a limitation.
The KPIs