To get to the heart of how to connect with women and understand makeup’s role in their lives at such a complex time in culture, we decided on a data-driven approach by conducting a national survey.

What we found was that women used makeup to build confidence in the face a variety of everyday pressures - from beauty stereotypes to domestic chores to career inequality. The results inspired us to create a first-player video game and film that showed the obstacle course women navigate everyday. It allowed players to walk in the shoes of the average woman and fight every challenge in their path - literally - in a funny, relatable way.

To do it, each aspect would be informed by data - from each item thrown at the avatar to makeup used as a “power up.” We even used what women felt pressured by to add in jokes players could laugh at and enjoy. In this way, we’d celebrate the “bring it on” attitude women bring to their everyday in a fun and enjoyable way.

The finding that a majority of American women 18-44 (70%) said they felt makeup gave them confidence to brave their day drove the narrative of our campaign. But to show this truth in action in an unexpectedly fun, relatable way that would disrupt the often serious, worthy empowerment messages of the beauty industry, we needed to do more.

So, we turned each of the gender-specific challenges and pressures women shared in the survey data into physical objects in the video game and film. Thus, the pressure to eat sparingly to achieve unrealistic beauty standards became a slew of salads (aka “rabbit food!”) flying at you. You could kick the crap out of catcallers offering you drinks with by a sultry “hey baby.” Ticking biological clocks came at you left and right warning “tick tock!”

Each item became an in-joke women would recognize and laugh at, and then get the pleasure of destroying with the touch of a button. As a result, the game surprised and excited players everywhere by bringing levity and fun to what women take on everyday, and inspiring them to continue to use makeup to brave it all.

The campaign received many positive mentions and overall positive sentiment around the game and film, with women commenting and sharing how the in jokes driven by data resonated with them, made then enjoy playing the game, and see Julep as a brand that gets them.

Overall, 64% of visitors to the Julep campaign website played the game and the film exceeded expected video views by over 62% with 400,000+ views and counting. At the end of game play, players received a promo code to shop Julep.com and redemptions exceeded our goals by 70%. The campaign was also covered in Refinery29, People, WWD, and CNN, as well as Adweek and AdAge.

The beauty industry has long told women how they should behave. Julep Cosmetics wanted to actually listen to them. To launch Julep’s new Cushion Complexion product, a national survey asked women about the role makeup plays in dealing with challenges they face everyday. Using this data, we created a first-person video game that let women beat the crap out of everything that frustrates them - from catcallers to ticking biological clocks. Data informed every aspect of the campaign, including the website which shared the results of the study, a video game and a web video. PR centered around key statistics.

We conducted a national online survey of American women 18-44 to understand the impact of a variety of pressures faced by women and the role makeup and skincare play in their lives.

We found that 72% of women felt the pressure of unrealistic beauty standards. Yet, the same number of women (70%) also felt putting on makeup actually bolstered their confidence to deal with such pressures. We were fascinated by this tension of women seeing makeup as a confidence-booster but also another obstacle to face. We wanted to reflect this in a relatable way.

A second round of questions dug deeper into which issues were struggled with most, allowing us to select the most resonant (i.e. “in-joke”) items to inform our campaign - from unwanted sexual advances to career inequality, unrealistic beauty standards to domestic stereotypes and social pressures.

Julep Cosmetics was founded on the belief that beauty should be a fun, judgment-free experience that empowers women. And while Julep isn’t a completely new brand, it lacked the awareness of most of its competitors. The brief was to create Julep’s first brand campaign targeted at women 18-44 with a culturally charged point of view that would resonate with them.

We were at the height of the diversity conversation in beauty and the start of the #MeToo movement, and we noticed the beauty category was jumping on the empowerment bandwagon in a worthy way at every turn. There wasn’t a beauty brand out there talking to women in a real, honest, lighthearted way. We felt Julep could fill that space - bringing a fun, relatable perspective to the conversation with a breakthrough idea. The objective of the campaign would be to drive awareness, social conversation, and purchases on Julep.com.