Maybelline
Case Study

Colossal Smoky Eyes Commercial

The challenge:

To create a commercial to sell Maybellines’ new innovative “Smoky Eyes” make up applicator.

The advert had to highlight how easy the product was to apply the new on trend “smokey eye look”. This has previously involved having to use five different make up products and took a considerable amount of time.

The two major product USP’s are:

  1. It cuts the time to apply a professional make-up artist/catwalk “smoky eye look” from 20-30 minutes to less than 5 minutes.
  2. It gets rid of having to buy and carry around five products by replacing them with just two: an ultra multi-brush mascara and a handy eye pencil with a smudger on the end to finish off the look.

The approach:

We were asked to cast three natural but aspirational and believable girls aged 18-25 of different ethnic backgrounds and without being too cliched and race sensitive.

Maybeline wanted a natural real-life approach and asked us to come up with a concept that would show the products’ ease of use in an everyday scenario as opposed to a slick clinical studio based setting.

They also wanted us to demonstrate the product being applied but in a “non hard-sell” way and to animate it creatively for the end-board.

The solution:

We created a cool fast-moving storyline set around three girls going for a drink together after a hard days “retail therapy”. The girls are dressed in casual daytime wear not for a night out.

Suddenly our leading girl gets a text (shown graphically on screen) from her boyfriend inviting her to a concert as a surprise present. But she only has 10 mins to get ready!

Luckily she’s got the new clothes and the girls have the make-up so they run to the Ladies and give her a lightning fast make-over complete with a sultry, sexy “Smoky Eye” look.

The result:

A cool light-hearted commercial bang on trend and client brief. By creating a narrative based around an everyday situation in a busy girl’s life we we able to show the product as both believable and highly appealing.

The commercial helped place Maybeline ahead of the competition as the “Go To” brand for the “Smoky Eye Look”.

Together with a series of How to videos that we also produced, the commercial was one of the main videos used on the Maybelline YouTube channel attracting over 200,000 views.

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