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Why settle for prestige beauty products when the hunt for a cheaper dupe can be a thrill?
That’s the premise behind MCoBeauty’s latest campaign and entertainment-driven activation. The effort, called “If You Know, You MCo” (or IYKYMCo for short) features a seven-episode social microdrama series starring Tana Mongeau, in which the creator is locked in a pink, laboratory-like room somewhere in MCoBeauty’s offices, where beauty-themed puzzles must be solved to escape. Audiences who wish they were there IRL can get in on the action, too: At 30 Escapology locations across the country, MCoBeauty has set up real-life beauty lab escape rooms for guests, complete with free product giveaways.
Together, the series and personal games are intended to create a more tangible brand world, said Meridith Rojas, CMO at VidaCorp, MCoBeauty’s parent company.
“You’ve heard a lot of brands talking about community, community, community, and how to incorporate it into your marketing campaigns,” Rojas told Marketing Brew. “How do you make them feel more part of it, and not alone [saying]’sit back, watch something’, or try to offer products? Instead, we wanted them to feel immersed in the world we create.”
A whole new world
MCoBeauty is well known in Australia, according to Rojas, but in the year and a half since coming to the US, the brand has made some notable efforts to increase awareness, including a placement on the popular reality series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Women and a store pop-up in New York that unapologetically borrowed from Sephora’s signature aesthetic. These moments were brand experiments in discovering how best to connect with audiences, Rojas said, and the microdrama-meets-escape-room campaign marks the next phase of that effort.
“Anyone can buy media, anyone can buy eyeballs, but you can’t buy someone’s interest,” Rojas said. “That has to be earned, and that’s so much more important, and that’s actually more indicative of their desire to have a relationship with the brand.”
An important part of bringing the escape room to life was finding a partner. Escapology rose to the top because it had locations nationwide, which Rojas said allowed for broad community building that wasn’t limited to more typical markets like New York or LA. Escapology’s work with MCoBeauty marks the first time the escape room company has partnered with a consumer goods brand, according to the company.
“We think our events are such an effective way [to land our message]but I think the only pain point was: how do you scale events?” Rojas said. “Being in one city is not really a community activation; it actually feels quite isolated.”
Combining that broader IRL access with the microdrama series – a format that several brands are experimenting with, and which Rojas believes is only in the early stages of popularity – will ideally create a full entertainment experience for viewers and customers.
Today, as a marketer you have to think like an entertainment executive, she said.
“We have to hook them into something that seems like they have to get to the end of those 60 seconds… and at the end of that we want them to go find the second episode,” Rojas said. “If we can do that, it’s a game changer, and [with] this microdrama series we might go to season 2 and 3.”
Cheat it
As MCoBeauty looks to its future in the U.S. market, Rojas said it has a solid foundation in its identity as a dupe brand, a category that only continues to grow with customers and investors.
“We are a proud brand that deceives,” says Rojas. “We don’t shy away from that. We own it.”
MCoBeauty doesn’t name the prestige beauty products it plans to rip off, but the brand appears to be giving cues to customers through packaging that mimics more expensive counterpoints. “There are certain things that we have to respect when it comes to the way we shape it,” Rojas noted, “and so I think the reason we’ve been able to grow the way we have is because we follow the legal rules of the game.” It’s a strategy that she says sets the company apart from other dupe brands that have yet to do it “as boldly as MCo,” as she put it.
Being a loud and proud dupe brand isn’t always received positively, but Rojas said there has been an increase in “masstige” beauty brands, which has helped change perception.
“Dupe” was a dirty word for a long time,” Rojas said.[Now] it’s like the status symbol ‘the death slant’. The age of gatekeeping is disappearing, and people are seeing that telling their friends or followers that you can get a better deal is actually social currency. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s our whole thing.”
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