The challenge

Dermalogica is a leading skincare brand rooted in education. Their product line grew out of a desire to provide skin therapists with best-in-class skin care products and education. Now, they provide products and treatments to both skin therapists and consumers alike.

As new players came to the fore, available to take advantage of Gen Z’s fascination with TikTok, Dermalogica needed a content strategy that translates their brand heritage in a way that the younger generation will engage with.

They came to Rise at Seven to evolve their brand positioning, in a fashion that translates to TikTok. A bi-product of which would be brand awareness amongst Gen Z. To do this, our dedicated strategy and social teams had to decipher:

• How do we drive demand for a brand like Dermalogica amongst Gen Z
• How do we reposition the brand on social so the content still feels authentic to their brand DNA
• How do we make them more discoverable as a brand on TikTok and position them as the educators for more generic, non branded key terms

Given Dermalogica’s late entry to the TikTok game, the brand was now competing for attention against leading digital and highstreet skincare brands as well as the entry of Gen Z and TikTok-first brands that are taking the media by storm.

The initial strategy was to uncover:

1. How are Gen Z’s using TikTok as a search engine for their beauty and skincare needs
2. How are Gen Z’s engaging with the content that is currently ranking for those relevant searches
3. How do we curate content that answers key searchterms alongside engaging our new target audience, keeping the brand’s educational DNA at the core of every idea
4. How do we ensure the work we does makes both short term and long term impact

Dermalogica also challenged us at Rise at Seven to implement a comprehensive TikTok SEO strategy to ensure the brand content ranks for key terms, including high-intent and conversion terms like product names or generic ‘best skincare’ queries.

The above formed a strategic plan to increase attention across TikTok in order to capture attention and drive growth.

What we did

Our initial audit and strategy response was broken down by the following:

• Key TikTok insights for the skincare and beauty industry as a whole
• Full audience insight including branded and 3rd party data utilising Rise proprietary tools
• Attention score analysis to decipher what types of content are the most engaged with our target audience to imitate and curate for Dermalogica
• A deep level analysis of emerging trends and recent popular trends for early mover advantages
• A full-scape opportunity analysis deciphering the value of the opportunity, market share analysis and share of voice in the market
• Best practice recommendations including creative iterations and UGC creators to fulfil our content strategy

Upon Dermalogica’s review of the strategy, and a fabulous experience of the brand’s products and services first-hand, the content creation team at Rise at Seven then:

• Curated a monthly content roll out plan including creative video content dedicated for organic and paid
• A user journey roll out, deciphering content opportunities at every stage of the funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion and retention
• TikTok SEO strategy and implementation for every piece of content produced and posted
• A cross channel approach to repurpose the best performing content across Meta ads and organic

The results

Following multiple viral videos, the Rise at Seven team transformed a traditional skincare brand into a Gen Z loved favourite. We reached over 4.5M new consumers and ensured Dermalogica ranked pos 1 for over 20 key terms across the platform.

This included high-intent branded and branded search queries such as:

• Key Dermalogica product names - Prisma Protect, Milkfoliant, Blackhead Clearing Fizz Mask and more
• Blackhead skincare
• Blackhead treatment
• Treatment room
• Plane SPF

We also transformed and engaged a new audience via the TikTok content, increasing the Gen Z followers of Dermalogica by over 78% in the first 90 days of working together, with no media spend whatsoever.