Deep Dive: 💄 Fenty Beauty

Howdy, marketer! 

This week’s deep dive is a TAG TEAM effort between your’s truly and Dhara over at Marketing Monk (if you aren’t already subscribed, what’re you waiting for?!)

This analysis was a blast because it’s far from what I’m familiar with. It’s a beauty brand, but not just any – Rihanna’s beauty brand.

Brand in the hot seat: 💄 Fenty Beauty

Today's Treasure Trove

• About Fenty Beauty

• Social Stats

• Target Demo

• Positioning

• Celebrity-Founder Brands

• Shining Campaigns

  • The Launch:

  • The Fenty Face Challenge:

  • Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl Performance

• Wrap Up

About Fenty Beauty

For too long now, the beauty industry has popularized fair skin tones.

The products available are usually not fit for darker skin shades. 

Because of mainstream brands, a significant segment of the market had been underserved for far too long.

So, Fenty Beauty was introduced by Rihanna in 2017 with a clear purpose: to offer products that truly work for everyone, regardless of skin tone. 

(blockquote) “I made Fenty Beauty for everyone. You don’t even understand how happy it makes me when I hear stories from the past five years about people finally finding their perfect shade match and seeing how much fun they are having expressing themselves with color.”

- Rihanna (Source)

Over time, Fenty Beauty has expanded its product offerings to include highlighters, lip products, eyeshadows, and skincare.

Today, the company is worth $2.8 billion! (Source)

Social Stats

• Facebook – 1m followers 

• Instagram – 13.1m followers

• X/Twitter – 803k followers

• YouTube – 1m subscribers, 878 videos

• Website – 714k visits per month

Magic happens when preparation and timing combine – you probably know the popularity of makeup tutorials on the internet, whether that’s YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, wherever. 

A beauty brand led by a celebrity of color in the social content age that’s digital-forward is perfectly positioned to grab attention.

Target Demo

Demographically, Rihanna’s dominating social media presence had 90% of its audience under 35.

This removed the barrier to entry for Fenty Beauty. 

It caters to all millennial and Gen-Z women who use makeup. 

Racially, though this is a broad approach, the brand does feature minorities like Asian and Black models in its marketing campaigns. 

This is a fresh approach - it is rare for the audience to see Mindy Kaling in a beauty collaboration, and that was the point.

Fenty Beauty gave eyes and a voice to women who have been ignored by mainstream beauty brands. 

Financially, the LVMH tag lends the luxury appeal to the brand. 

However, Fenty Beauty wanted to be more accessible and is thus priced lower than other luxury beauty brands. 

So, it remains more inclusive than its peers even in terms of its pricing.

It is available in online and offline stores of Sephora, making it convenient to shop. 

This also allows Fenty Beauty to step into the existing customer base of Sephora.

Positioning

Fenty Beauty didn’t just launch a makeup line – it flipped the entire beauty industry on its head. 

While legacy brands were still peddling five-shade foundations, Rihanna came in and dropped 50. 

The idea here is that beauty isn’t exclusive – it’s for everyone. 

That radical inclusivity wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. It was a revolution that forced every other brand to play catch-up. 

Fenty’s positioning is clear: bold, unapologetic, and effortlessly cool – a brand that doesn’t just follow trends but sets them. 

And, honestly, who better to be the face of the brand than Rihanna? She is the embodiment of this ethos.

Celebrity-Founder Brands

Celebrity-founded brands are a double-edged sword.  

On the pro side, they come with:

• Built-in hype

• Instant credibility

• Fanbase ready to dish out dollars

Fenty Beauty is the gold standard here – Rihanna didn’t just slap her name on a label, she filled a real market gap, proving that a celeb brand can have both hype and substance.  

But there are cons, too. The brand’s success is often tied to the star’s relevance. 

If the celeb steps back or their image takes a hit, the brand can lose momentum (just look at Jessica Simpson’s beauty line – what happened there?).

The real test is longevity. Fenty’s staying power comes from innovation and inclusivity, not just Rihanna’s name. That’s why it’s more than a passing trend.

Let’s juxtapose Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty with a brand like Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile. 

While both are celebrity-led brands – Fenty is a “for us” brand that is very personal. Mobile service is effectively a commodity.

Ryan Reynolds is upfront about purchasing the company – not founding it. And his approach is very traditional marketing-forward: with ad spend and cheeky promotions leading the way over innovation.

Both methods are viable, but the key to success is authenticity.

Shining Campaigns

The Launch:

Fenty Beauty created and broke records with its launch.

(Source)

Rihanna wanted to make this brand global from the start itself, so it was launched in 17 countries around the world at the same time. 

Fenty Beauty launched with an initial range of 40 foundation shades with this ad film:

Today, the brand offers 50 shades, fulfilling the “Beauty for ALL’ mission of the brand. 

Since its inception, the brand challenged the longstanding norms in the cosmetics industry by providing an inclusive range of shades and formulations designed for diverse complexions. 

This dedication to inclusivity has been a cornerstone of the brand’s identity.

It has influenced countless other brands to rethink their own product lines, also known as The Fenty Effect. 

The Fenty Face Challenge:

Given Rihanna’s social media influence, a campaign on these platforms was a must.

So, they launched the #FentyFace Challenge, just after the launch. 

It encouraged everyone to share their looks using the Fenty foundation.

This garnered authentic user-generated content (UGC) for the brand, showing its versatility. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Debashree Biswas🪬🧿 (@debashreebiswas)

Moreover, when people found their perfect shades, they were more likely to recommend it to friends and family.

And as you know, word-of-mouth remains the best marketing and most credible strategy. 

The campaign was a success with more than 248K posts using #fentyface currently on Instagram.

So, in 2022, #TheNextFentyFace was launched on TikTok with a chance to be featured as a model for the brand for its 5 year anniversary. 

(Source)

These were the finalists for the campaign! 

With this, every user and post became a mouthpiece for the inclusivity value of the brand. 

Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl Performance

In a complete power move, Rihanna performed for the half-time show of the Super Bowl (one of the biggest sporting events in the USA).

The show is only 13 minutes long, but incredibly powerful – she performed wearing a wild red outfit and she was PREGNANT.

But that’s not what I’m hear to talk about – in the middle of her show, one of her dancers hands her a makeup kit and she actually checks and applies Fenty Beauty products right there in front of millions of people.

Wow. It’s commonly known that musicians don’t get paid to perform at the Super Bowl – the exposure alone is usually enough to boost streams and album sales and make the performance worth it. 

But Bad Girl Riri is smarter than that. She used her very limited airtime to bring attention to her beauty brand – a better revenue stream.

The feminine presence was undeniable – which was especially striking during a sports event dominated by male viewers.

As if Fenty wasn’t already in the mainstream, this was the “wow” moment – the halftime show broke records with an estimated 121 million viewers.

Wrap Up

Fenty Beauty didn’t just enter the beauty industry – it revolutionized it. By making inclusivity the standard, not the exception, Rihanna built a brand that’s both culturally relevant and commercially unstoppable.  

With a $2.8 billion valuation, viral campaigns, and game-changing shade diversity, Fenty offers a fresh take on an old industry.

The lesson here is that authenticity wins. 

Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance wasn’t a cheap shill, it was her risking her reputation to put her brand in front of millions of people. Because she believes in it. 

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems + Dhara from Marketing Monk