The brand, which was recently acquired by L’Oreal, has declared Adelaine Morin, the face and voice behind YouTube channel ‘C0OK1EMONSTER’, as the Winner of its 2014 Fine Artistry of Cosmetic Elites (FACE) Awards.
Video blogging holds huge potential in the beauty industry, and NYX’s dominance in the arena - which is otherwise dominated by non-professional bloggers - is an unusual success story for beauty brands.
Pulling in the views
With the annual contest seeing views on its video entries explode over the judging period, the competition has gathered massive exposure for NYX Cosmetics.
During its first year, the contest received 40 million earned media views, while in the second, this grew dramatically to 140 million views. ReelSEO says that the brand received 32 million impressions on YouTube in just two days during this year’s competition.
NYX’s focus on content creators rather than the brand itself has really paid off – the brand’s sales hit $72 million in 2013, up 46% on the year before, and, according to L'Oreal, rose an even speedier 56% up to May this year.
Regaining control
Up to this year, major brands controlled just 3% of the site’s beauty video content of 14.9 billion views according to figures from YouTube analysts Pixability, indicating a particularly lackluster corporate presence.
Instead, vloggers (consumer reviewers) generally hold the power of influence over consumers, with YouTube’s top 15 vloggers now boasting an average of 2.1 million channel subscribers each.
NYX has proved one brand which quickly recognized this and a few years ago began working with vloggers rather than competing against them, engaging in communication about products, and pioneering the FACE Awards.
“The NYX FACE Awards competition was created to empower beauty influencers and act as a launch pad for achieving their dreams,” says NYX Cosmetics CEO Scott Friedman. “We are proudly committed to offering this unique platform for beauty vloggers, providing them the opportunity to further develop their talent, support their career growth and gain recognition within the makeup artistry industry.”