The Olay “Face Anything” campaign involved an in-depth and far-reaching understanding of how media influences consumer behavior and perceptions of their brand. By combining traditional media with in-person events and key influencer partnerships, we leveraged powerful messaging across a variety of touch points culminating in a robust campaign resulting in over a billion impressions - along with a huge impact on the progress of female empowerment and overall relevancy of Olay as a brand.

Generations of women around the world have been told that they are “too” something—whether it’s too ambitious, too opinionated, too emotional, too strong, too shrill, or any number of other adjectives. Olay enlisted us to design a campaign that would make a strong statement about how Olay views these labels and how women can move beyond them.

As many of Olay’s competitors have entered this conversation, we knew it would be vital for the campaign to be authentic from the beginning. Olay couldn’t just be perceived as talking the talk—they would need to show they’re willing to walk the walk.

That meant online campaigns and coverage wouldn’t be enough. We would need to find a way where Olay could actually do something to advance the fight against judgement, labels, and perceived limitations. And meanwhile help to showcase what women around the world are capable of and can achieve.

Olay has long been a trusted voice and provider of beauty and self-care products for women around the country. But Olay has often struggled in the market of women younger than 35, a market Olay calls the “MI-30” group and who often sees Olay as their ‘mother’s or grandmother’s brand.’

We recognized the need to create a campaign that would do more than just put Olay in the spotlight. With that, we envisioned the "Face Anything" campaign, designed to inspire women to face whatever challenges the world places in their path with courage, confidence, and self-assuredness.

As other brands have entered this conversation to varying degrees of success, we knew we would have to bring a level of authenticity and impact that isn’t easily synthesized. The "Face Anything" campaign would have to make a major splash with depth and meaning to bring something new to this vital movement.

As we developed our strategy for launching Olay into the conversation surrounding women's' global mission of personal beauty and power, we determined that the best voices for speaking directly to women were those they already knew and trusted.

Through a vast inter-agency coordination, we kicked off created a :60 second spot featuring definitive female voices and genuine cultural influencers with strong opinions – and the confidence to make those opinions known. They shared powerful stories of the labels they’ve overcome and the way they stay motivated to Face Anything.

We then supported this spot and online content with a YouTube distribution strategy aiming for both mass awareness and conversion. We also activated widespread media activations across a variety of unique mediums. Our message was amplified across a wide range of audiences and diverse channels – resulting in a viable content ecosystem and huge impact.

On August 13th, alongside the lead-up to New York Fashion Week (NYFW), we launched the Olay #FaceAnything brand campaign with large-scale billboard ads in Times Square NYC, a 10-page ad in Vogue’s September issue, and teaser videos online alongside our #FaceAnything Snapchat filter social media activations.

Content featuring our Olay influencers was covered across a wide range of relevant outlets including Shape, AdAge, The Daily Mail, and Adweek. We enlisted strategic media partners like Bustle, NowThis, and Refinery29 to help deliver our message.

This all culminated in our “Face Anything” fashion show; the first ever make up-free and fashion free runway event. It featured athletes, comedians, models, bloggers, and survivors of disease all making their way down the catwalk make up-free, in a show of strength and the belief that women are never ‘too’ anything. The show was covered in dozens of major outlets and received massive positive social media.

“Face Anything” broke conventions of beauty advertising by amplifying the stories of barrier-breaking women. We stopped talking at women and became a platform for women.

We inspired a new generation of young women to believe in Olay's purpose. In 3 months, “Face Anything” increased millennial household penetration by 8% (the highest in four years) and we saw an 11% sales increase in October, 2018.

With over 85 earned social posts by key influencers, 100% of these reached our target MI30 audience and our #FaceAnything earned over 845M earned social impressions. Major influencers described our presences at the New York Fashion Week as ‘the biggest highlight’ and ‘the best of.’

We amassed over 1.6 billion total press impressions with a 100% positive sentiment across a wide range of major influencers and press outlets.

Most importantly, we helped women reclaim what was rightfully theirs: the right to express themselves.