ICONIC STILL | CARMEX

UK Market Growth

As new, digital-first beauty brands have entered the market, the primary challenge for Carmex has been staying relevant without sacrificing the brand equity they’ve developed over the near-century they’ve been in business. Carmex needed to be in the same spaces as their competitors with performance advertising on Meta, Google, and TikTok. But, as they don’t have an ecommerce store of their own - instead only selling through their Amazon storefront and 3rd-party stockists - the primary focus of Carmex’s performance marketing campaigns has been reach. 

Working as Carmex's ecommerce advertising agency we had a leg up in this regard, as most customers instantly recognise their iconic yellow packaging. So, through a coordinated, top-of-funnel presence, we could double down on existing brand awareness and encourage purchases indirectly. This has meant running brand awareness campaigns across Meta, TikTok, and Google simultaneously, with each platform playing a distinct role in the wider strategy.

Meta has served as a reliable foundation for reach and retargeting - allowing us to build lookalike audiences based on engagement and re-engage users who have already shown interest in the brand. Google has supported broader discovery, capturing intent-driven search behaviour in the lip care category. Whilst TikTok has been a newer and particularly exciting addition to the channel mix, one where we’ve been able to build brand familiarity with a newer, younger demographic.

Cost efficiency at scale has been a key driver at every stage of our collaboration. As an ecommerce marketing company working across a wide range of brands, we know that increasing reach by simply scaling spend isn't enough. Sure, you can increase reach very easily just by increasing spend by 10x, but we needed to ensure that cost per result stayed roughly the same, as the number of eyes increases. 

Creative Strategy and Campaign Building

As we’ve worked on the digital side of Carmex’s awareness, we’ve also been involved in the brand’s wider campaign strategies. Working on messaging, creative, and more, we delivered brand-celebrating campaigns across several different formats.  

Through our design resource service, we’d work in tandem with the Carmex creative team to deliver creative that makes Carmex inescapable. Meaning their iconic yellow packaging was on display across out-of-home advertising and more. 

Keeping it Digital

Looping back to the digital world, the creative campaigns we developed were then repurposed across Carmex’s performance marketing channels. 

We know what formats drive engagement, which messages prompt action, and how to translate a brand's value proposition into scroll-stopping creative, which meant we could turn creative-first campaigns into best-practice Meta and Google ads. Not only did this further enhance reach by showing up on the platforms used by different customers, but it also amplified each campaign’s message.