21/02/25 – BY APRIL BUTTEN
Science Meets Seduction: Why the Best Beauty Brands Balance Data and Desire
And the power of staying true to your roots.
We’ve been sharing stories for thousands of years as a powerful tool in understanding, interpreting and passing on information. It’s one of the most sacred aspects of being a human, and yet, we seem to have forgotten all about it when it comes to selling beauty.
If you’re still struggling to find your place within the booming beauty industry, you might’ve forgotten just how powerful your story is. And you likely need to learn how to harness that in order to build a community that’s even more powerful.
Picture this: you’ve spent years ideating, developing and perfecting your hero product. It’s gone through 27 iterations to ensure its texture, scent and formula are second-to-none. It’s finally ready. You’ve done it!
Yet, you haven’t. Because your copy hasn’t even had a thought. “Ah, that’s OK. I’ll just throw something into Chat GPT and call it a day.” So you do. Although you know your product is exactly what your consumers need, they don’t. And that community you dreamt of isn’t following. Throwing clinical trial claims at it isn’t helping either. Why? Because you haven’t told them why they should care.
Taking stock and looking at the bigger picture isn’t just a want-to-have. It’s a need-to-have to succeed in a saturated market.
There’s a reason that the most successful brands are using their data to solve problems with distinctive copy as an equal importance. This stuff matters. Getting it right can feel impossible but with the right tools it’s not—promise.
We’ll share why data is paramount in 2025 (leading investors and guiding conversion campaigns). But what we can’t forget is that in the quest for results, surveys, trials and stats, your brand’s persona and narrative cannot afford to fall by the wayside.
Dare we say, science isn’t everything.
In the beauty industry, recent funding rounds show that science-led brands can gain as much as 2.5x venture capital funding as those without data and science-led claims.
Anything from explaining how ingredients work, proving formulas do as they promise with clinical trials, utilising science-led before and after results and proving educational social content can be intelligently used to increase sales.
Data undoubtedly matters. After all, no customer is going to buy something they don’t believe in or repeatedly purchase a product that doesn’t work.
Using science to boost sales is not to be slept on. But like all great things in life, it’s not as simple as slapping on a fancy-sounding term and calling it a day. Brands need life breathing into stats and studies—and numbers alone can’t do that.
Science doesn’t buy trust
What first can’t be ignored is that the average consumer doesn’t always understand the science. We can respect the intelligence of consumers while realising that they don’t know or care that hyaluronic acid holds 1000 times its weight in water if you don’t illustrate why this matters.
Let’s not forget the basic why test. Why should people really care, and why should they turn to you above all else? Scientists have long been using storytelling to convey their messaging because they understand how important it is to zoom out of the minutiae. Don’t get lost in the claims you’ve spent years working towards only to forget to tell the consumer why you created it in the first place. Whether it comes from years of pain trying to solve a personal issue, or a significant gap in the market you knew you could be the one person to truly fill, something pushed you to take the leap and create this groundbreaking formula. That’s what people care about, and believe in.
Take Go-To Skincare, for example, it respects consumer intelligence at its heart but uses distinctive design and copy to tell people exactly why they should believe the founders personal story, and trust that it will work for them too. Defining core brand values, crafting clever copy and impactful graphics, and then allowing science and results to support that is a winning combo.
Make way for the dermfluencer
On a mission to merge the two is where dermfluencers take to the stage, Once upon a time, celebrity endorsements were king. Now? Beauty brands are fighting over dermatologist endorsements.
It’s proof that consumers are looking to experts in their fields to deliver advice and information. The dermatologists who—for the better or worse, that’s up for debate—have excelled in the influencer space have done so not because they have the best credentials or the most accolades, but because they’re good storytellers.
Their educational backgrounds matter, but their ability to deliver a compelling story does in equal amounts. As brand writers, we’ve seen this and worked with brands on ethically utilising this in a way that’s both educational and entertaining.
Say it after us: I will nurture my community
But even still, whacking a lab coat on someone doesn’t make a consumer trust you—and it shouldn’t.
Fostering a community has never been more important for beauty.
Doing this doesn’t mean starting a whatsapp group, calling it a community and hoping for the best. It means giving consumers something that they can feel a sense of belonging in. Rare beauty has been at the forefront of this, connecting makeup and mental health; even offering mindfulness content as part of their ‘comfort club’.
Refy is another great example as a brand that nurtures its community offline as much as it does online. ‘Refy World’ gives customers exclusive access to events tailored to their interests, as well as curated rewards.
This ultimately creates a community where consumers feel like they are part of your brand, not just buying your products. Despite this seemingly being all community and story-led, these activations and campaigns are absolutely data-driven; they’re just done so in a way that complements, not confuses, brand identity.
At BOAST, we help brands like you reverse your messaging hierarchy—leading with desirability, backed by credibility. Who are you and what do you stand for? Only then do we apply data to solidify brand messaging.
Thoughtful practices like maintaining a consistent brand identity across platforms to leveraging data in a way that supports emotive campaigns are powerful in marrying data and desire.
And so, this story comes back to storytelling. Data can’t replace human emotion and the secret sauce is how you combine the two effortlessly and in a way that keeps consumers coming back for more.