Today, Rimmel London celebrates the launch of its new Thrill Seeker Pitch Black mascara through a two-fold campaign across both high-impact online and OOH channels.
The first-of-its-kind campaign for both Rimmel London and Coty, orchestrated by media agency Zenith UK, will focus exclusively on digital and online channels. The bold move from Rimmel sees the beauty brand changing tack to drive mass awareness and engagement with Gen Z consumers, driving buzz and appetite around both the campaign and new Thrill Seeker Pitch Black product. The campaign, conceptualised by creative and production studio Tommy, will go live in key London locations that align with Rimmel’s core audience, as well as in digital spaces such as TikTok, Snapchat, Meta, YouTube, Vevo and VOD (ITVX, C4, Sky, Amazon Freevee).
Drawing on one of London’s most famous landmarks, Tower Bridge, the beauty brand has also partnered with Snap to launch an AR geo-takeover experience. The ‘beauty-first’ interactive activation enables Rimmel to tap into Snapchat’s 21 million monthly active users in the UK, to reach its core demographic of Gen Z and millennial consumers. Snapchatters can transform Tower Bridge into the volumising product by pointing their cameras at the iconic landmark. The multi-product video experience will see the famous towers ‘melt’ into black before transforming into the new Thrill Seeker Pitch Black mascara. This activation follows an already successful OOH positioning from Rimmel earlier this year, which celebrated the beauty brand’s partnership with Maya Jama with a hologauze 3D hologram activation in the same location.
Over the weekend of 19th and 20th August Rimmel-branded pedi-cab riders armed with Snap codes will be positioned around Tower Bridge encouraging consumers to scan and interact with this experience, alongside the chance to obtain a sample of the volumising mascara. The alliance with Snap also extends to an interactive in-app AR Lens. Rimmel and Snap will transport Snapchatters to an interactive ‘Rimmel world’, bringing the product to life with a bespoke immersive lens to virtually try on the mascara. In addition to the AR activations, the campaign creative will also run as the first impression for 24 hours within the premium content that lives on Snapchat’s Discover tab.
Offline, the campaign enables consumers to Live the London Look and experience the full impact of the product, by gaining access to the before and after visuals of the Thrill Seeker Pitch Black mascara through lenticulars lenses placed on London buses. The Pitch Black colouring of the product is also brought to life across impactful placements including London Underground digital ribbons and digital billboards around London. As part of this, JC Decaux AR D6 “special build” takeovers will sit in both London Westfield shopping centres; the placements’ front and back camera technology is set to encourage users to engage with the campaign, as they observe the Pitch Black product through the AR screens in real environments.
The high-impact visual experiences for this campaign created by local London-based creative and production studio, Tommy, with media planning and buying from Zenith UK, will run until 30th August.
Susie Thompson, Media & Communications Senior Director at Coty UK&I, said: “This campaign showcases Rimmel tapping into Snap’s young audiences in the most fun and engaging way by harnessing the power of London landmarks – something perfectly on brand for Rimmel. We’re constantly thinking of new ways to push the creative boundaries for our brands, and this partnership with Snap connects us with this key audience in such a cool way that we know Snap’s audience will be excited to get involved.”
Katie Morrison, Senior Client Partner for Beauty at Snapchat, commented: “250 million people engage with AR every single day on Snapchat, whilst 92% of Gen Z say they are interested in using AR for shopping, so putting AR at the heart of Rimmel’s Snap strategy was key to delivering an impactful campaign. It’s been a really exciting project to work on, especially as Rimmel’s approach has a strong emphasis on innovation. They leant into the data and insights we provided on how Snapchatters are engaging with AR on the platform, and as a result, will reap the benefits of using our latest products and solutions.”
Katie Morrison, Business Director at Zenith UK, said: “It’s great to continue to build a strong partnership between Rimmel and Snapchat and reinforce Rimmel’s association with such an iconic London landmark for this campaign, bringing the product to life for consumers in new ways that they’ve not experienced before.”
Emy Cragoe, Account Director at Tommy, said: “Working collaboratively with the Coty and Zenith teams allowed us to deliver the optimum beauty brand experience across the physical and digital platforms their audiences are most engaged with. We identified Snap’s AR landmarker as the perfect tool to bring the ‘Thrill Seeker’ story to life in London, which was further amplified by creating impactful anamorphic OOH experiences at scale across many more iconic London locations. By bridging the physical with the digital world, we can consistently revitalise creative, so that Rimmel appears in new and refreshing ways across the campaign lifecycle.”
