Merit Beauty
International Expansion & U.S. Awareness Campaign
A full integrated marketing campaign for Merit Beauty's launch in Australia and multi-city U.S. awareness push — built around the brand's "do less" philosophy and a $1.4M budget.
Campaign Strategy · Creative Development · Experiential Marketing · Beauty
The Brief
Merit Beauty is a clean, minimalist beauty brand known for its "antidote to the overwhelming beauty landscape" positioning. The challenge: grow aided brand awareness from 20% to 23% in six months, and acquire 10,000 new loyalty program members — while simultaneously launching in Australia and driving awareness across five major U.S. cities.
The Approach
We built a two-part campaign strategy: an international launch in Australia anchored by a Bondi Beach pop-up and influencer PR seeding, and a domestic OOH transportation takeover across New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and San Francisco.
The creative platform — "Less Effort, More Merit" — extended Merit's existing brand voice into physical and digital spaces, meeting consumers where they already were: on the subway, in a taxi, scrolling TikTok, or walking through SoHo.
Australia Launch
The Australia strategy leaned into the natural alignment between Merit's minimalist ethos and laid-back Australian values. A four-week phased rollout moved from influencer teasing to a Bondi Beach pop-up event ($60K activation), PR gifting packages to 100 local influencers, and a three-month paid media campaign across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Expected results: 24M paid impressions, 8M unique target reach, 10,000 new Australian email subscribers.
U.S. Awareness
The domestic campaign focused on high-traffic transportation media in five cities — subway takeovers in New York and Chicago, bus wraps in Los Angeles and Miami, taxi wraps in New York and San Francisco, and airport shuttle branding at JFK and LAX — supplemented by geo-targeted paid social and pop-up moments in SoHo (New York) and River North (Chicago).
Total U.S. budget: $1,427,500 USD. Expected results: 150M impressions, 10,000 new email subscribers, 20% localized sales growth after three months.
Loyalty Program
A parallel campaign drove loyalty enrollments through a personality quiz — "What's in your bag?" — offering a surprise gift on the next purchase for newsletter sign-ups. The quiz-to-signup funnel was supported by Instagram and TikTok paid media, affiliate micro-influencers (50K–150K followers), and an email drip series. Target: 10,000 new loyalty members at a 25% conversion rate.
My Role
Campaign strategy, creative concept development, channel planning, budget allocation, KPI framework, and pitch deck production. Collaborated across a three-person team with shared ownership of research, consumer segmentation, and presentation.