#BBMoment: Dior, and Why More is More

For some time now, Christian Dior Makeup has been one of the top performers in the luxury beauty space, racking up impressive Media Impact Values™ of $22.9M and $19.3M in the months of July and August respectively. In this month’s #BBMoment installment, we take a look at the strategy that Dior Makeup implements, which helps them achieve such a high MIV® in comparison to their competitors’.

#BBMoment: An analytical look at Dior Makeup’s strategy

Beauty in bulk

Luxury brands have long been releasing makeup lines as a way to reach consumers at a more accessible price point, and develop customer relationships as an entity. For Dior, more is more. The brand held 3.76K placements across the month of August, while their top-performing competitor held only 1.73K and a total MIV of $9.49M (a fraction of the $19.3M Dior drummed up). These placements are derived from the five different Voices they activate – Partners, Influencers, Media, Owned Media, and Celebrities, all of which play a part in Dior Makeup’s high MIV – as the brand has a somewhat equal Voice split. While Influencers represent 39% of their Voice split, their online media placements are over triple that of their competitors’, with global features in China, The United States, and Japan to name a few. 

Here is a look at the Voice Split for Dior Makeup, during the month of August:

Influential insights

Influencers accounted for $7.47M of the total MIV Dior Makeup accumulated over the month of August. Most of this value is interestingly generated by Mid-tier Influencers (those with a following of 100K-500K), whilst brands like YSL, Givenchy, Armani and Chanel primarily focus on Mega Influencers (500K-2M followers). Again, Dior Makeup featured 1K placements via Influencers – double that of their competitors in August. However, the brand doesn’t sacrifice quality for quantity, as the Influencer Voices they activate produce content that resonates with their target audience. The top Influencers for Dior Makeup overall, varied in terms of their following size, as shown by the list below:

It is interesting to note that YouTuber and All Star Influencer, Tati Westbrook achieved a MIV for Dior Makeup of $293K from just one video. @xthuyle, the top-performing influencer by MIV for Dior Makeup in August, on the other hand, featured the brand multiple times across a series of her how-to videos that feature on her Instagram account. The high number of posts from @xthuyle who also achieve high levels of engagement resulting in a high MIV mirrors Dior’s strategy of high volume and high quality. 

Cross-channel consistency 

Another Voice that performs well for Dior Makeup is that of Partners, including both retail partners and Dior’s branded accounts. The company successfully directs awareness towards their ‘Dior Makeup’ channels via their original page, which is a simple and easy way to swap coverage between two accounts, especially if you are an already established brand. This tactic is a large part of Dior Makeup’s success, as a large portion of their placements by Partners are from the Christian Dior branded accounts. 

In the graphic below, you can see Dior’s performance in relation to some of their top competitors. Dior generated $3.32M just from Partner placements, whilst other brands put a lower emphasis on this, and achieved lower MIVs overall, during the month of August.

Another key Partner for Dior Makeup is retail. One of the highest performing Partner posts was from retailer Sephora, on social media platform Facebook. While the post generated $73.7K in MIV, it’s potential reach was 18.7M which is a lot of potential customers. Retail partners that are cosmetics-specific like Sephora are imperative for beauty brands because their following consists almost exclusively of beauty lovers, looking for new product releases, tutorials and insider info. This is also clear based on the fact that 78% of the MIV generated via Partners is purely through Instagram. Leveraging these Partners when it comes to social media is a smart move that has paid off for brands like Dior Makeup. 

Dior’s across the board strategy and even Voice Mix allows them to activate different touchpoints, and meet audiences in different communication channels. Coupling this with a large publication volume, the luxury beauty brand manages to consistently achieve a MIV more than double that of its competitors. 

To see how you can access insights like these and tap into the success behind where brands like Dior Makeup direct their investments and coverage, take a look at our Insights Software.