Friday, January 9, 2009

Playing Dress Up

Sephora generated some buzz over the holiday season with a new initiative that especially resonated with young female customers. The beauty retailer allowed online shoppers to test products with its virtual “Mistletoe Makeover” site during the holidays.

Powered by TAAZ.com, a virtual-makeover company, Sephora ran a “Mistletoe Makeover” e-card Web site in conjunction with a promotion on the beauty retailer's Facebook page. Shoppers could upload a photo at MistletoeMakeover.com and apply virtual make-up to the image. Once created, users could then send a Mistletoe e-card to their friends and family, as well as purchase the makeup used.

This concept was made popular by similar sites such as Simpsonize Me (a promotion with Burger King) and even YearbookYourself.com (a silly site that places your photo in various Yearbooks from past decades). Gen Y loves to personalize photos of themselves and/or friends.

I'm hardly surprised that Sephora cashed in on the trend -- they tend to keep on top of what's popular among young consumers. I'm only surprised more retailers haven't followed its lead just yet.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I just wanted to say that I appreciate your work analyzing consumer trends amongst the Gen Y crowd. As a Gen Y member myself, it's always nice to see something that I can take to my marketing team in order to support projects targeted at "millennials." It helps support my case and also provides insight into how large and profitable this market segment can be for those retailers that can make the connection.

Anonymous said...

"Mistletoe Makeover" is a fabulous site. Sephora is always behind such relevant fun stuff. I read the site was created by EVB San Francisco (www.EVB.com)-- they do some really cool work!