National Indigenous History Month Campaign

Campaign Objective
To improve perceptions of Sephora as a brand that has clear values and stands for inclusion in beauty and retail, by championing Indigenous peoples’ untold stories through imagery and conversation.

Campaign Concept – We’ve been here. We are here. We belong here.

National Indigenous Month is a time to learn about, appreciate and acknowledge the contributions Indigenous peoples’ have made in shaping the country we live in. To do that in a meaningful way we needed to start at the beginning – addressing, engaging and understanding our collective history and how we are a part of it. We needed to move past the focus solely on oppression and negativity and move towards a focus on the strengths of Indigenous peoples’ – providing a platform that allows for real representation, for their voices to be heard and their truths to be told. With this campaign we are sending a message – that people from all Indigenous communities can feel safe and welcome in our stores, in our offices, in the beauty community and on. By taking this stance we hoped to inspire other companies and communities to do the same. Change… real and meaningful change comes from courage, strength and innovation… we ‘Sephora Canada’ want and need to be an agent of change.

Results and impact:

The campaign launch video achieved an extremely impressive social engagement rate 5.59% (+2233% vs. YTD benchmark of 0.24%), making it by far the retailer’s top performing piece of content YTD.  Social posts for the two collaborator videos also far exceeded Sephora Canada’s benchmarks, delivering engagement rates of 2.02% (+742%vs. benchmark) and 1.66% (+596% vs. benchmark) respectively.

Through paid amplification in YouTube, the launch video achieved over 7.8M impressions, exceeding its reach target. A YouTube brand lift study demonstrated that the video was able to drive a relative favourability lift of 8.3%, surpassing Google’s benchmark of 5%.

Reach of the campaign extended far beyond the social space, achieving over 28.5 million earned media impressions in the month of June.

Overall, through engaging video content, the campaign was successful in its ultimate goal of championing diverse representation in the beauty space and fostering a greater sense of belonging for many Indigenous Peoples.