YouTube is fast becoming the go-to destination for make-up artistry online, with 14.9 billion beauty-related video views across the platform. But it seems major beauty brands are falling behind, with just 3 per cent of YouTube beauty-related video views going to leading beauty houses and 97 per cent of views coming from independent content creators.
It’s amazing how teenagers in their bedrooms can create more YouTube content than some of the major brands and their agencies,” data software company Pixability chief marketing officer Rob Ciampa told WWD. This isn’t that brands can’t do it; there is [just] so much emphasis on high-end content. They don’t need as highly produced content - and this is a by-product of what’s coming over from the TV world.”
Research by Pixability found that top beauty bloggers produce 270 per cent more content and publish content seven times more frequently than brands. Vloggers typically have 10 times the amount of videos on their YouTube channels than brands, with vloggers posting approximately two times a week while brands post on average once every six weeks.
YouTube’s top 25 beauty bloggers have 115 times more subscribers than branded beauty channels and receive 26 times more comments. The top three vloggers in the world are Michelle Phan with nearly six million YouTube channel subscribers, Bethany Mota on 5.5 million subscribers, and Zoe Sugg of Zoella on four million. Most leading beauty brands and retailers have less than 200,000 subscribers.
They [brands] are taking a TV legacy mentality to the digital world. They are pretty sophisticated and good marketers, but we haven’t seen a shift of true digital mentality. They’ve got some phenomenal non-digital content, and a lot of these folks are taking this well produced content - commercials - and dumping it on YouTube. It’s just content that they’ve replicated for digital. Their [young audience] response to the commercial content isn’t very good, so it tends not to be viewed and shared — and that’s backed up by our numbers,” says Ciampa.
Beauty technology company ModiFace CEO Dr Parham Aarabi explains, The biggest disconnect - and I see this with mobile as well - is that big brands don’t really understand the notion and impetus of video blogging. They sometimes throw quite a bit of money at agencies, hoping that that generates significant followers on YouTube, but that doesn’t always work.”
Phan reveals to WWD, Authenticity is key and it’s hard for a brand who didn’t start with that authentic voice to hop over and create a YouTube channel.”
