R.E.M. Beauty is a makeup brand founded by singer and actress Ariana Grande. I analyzed the brand’s social media presence to determine their paid and organic strategies, as well as how they use their socials to reach business objectives.

Organic vs Paid Content

In The Marketing Campaign Playbook by Sharon Lee Thony, she explains how organic strategies and paid strategies both serve their own important purpose. Organic content helps to build trust with your audience, which increases engagement. Users are more likely to engage with content that isn’t an obvious advertisement. Paid content is necessary to get your message out to new audiences. 

R.E.M. Beauty often includes Ariana Grande in organic content. As a celebrity-founded brand, organic content can certainly do well when Grande is involved because many fans are interested in hearing from her. Examples of this include “get ready with me” content for Grande’s music videos using the products. Another example is a video of Grande and friends attempting a TikTok trend but failing. They still posted the video showing all of the attempts they made at the trend, showing how they ultimately gave up. The video ended with Grande jokingly saying “Guys can’t you just buy the products they’re great.” This was silly and memorable which made for great organic content. The brand also includes other creators in their organic content, using the style of video that a makeup influencer would use. This makes sense for their organic content, rather than paid content because it feels more authentic. 

I looked at R.E.M. Beauty’s paid content using the Meta Ad Library. Their most recent ads are videos of Grande describing new products. It makes sense to use Grande for this because she would be more recognizable to new audiences. Many people might know who Ariana Grande is, but they might not know that she has a makeup brand. In addition to that, platforms require ads to be disclosed as so, which might cause some to scroll away. Using Grande in the content could keep some people around. 

Metrics

R.E.M. Beauty’s content gets a lot of likes and comments, as well as shares which stood out to me in particular. Shares appear to be a metric they prioritize through visually pleasing content that one might want to repost on their story and share with their followers. Conversion rates are prioritized as well. In Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard, Blanchard describes a scenario in which the head of a marketing department is having a difficult time creating a social media strategy. He said he was trying to acquire 25,000 followers on Twitter and 50,000 fans on Facebook. When Blanchard asked what value this provided for the company, he responded that they would have more reach and impressions. When Blanchard points out that 25,000 new customers acquired through Twitter is more valuable than simply having 25,000 Twitter followers, the head of the marketing department understood where he was going wrong. R.E.M. Beauty has shown that they understand this concept as well. On most posts they are utilizing shop tools such as product tags on Instagram and TikTok Shop links on TikTok. However, it’s smart that they don’t use that on every post. The “shop now” links can be distracting and cause a user to scroll away, so it’s helpful to attract some people by including posts without. 

Overall, I am impressed by R.E.M. Beauty’s way of using social media to their advantage. I think they’re doing everything right to reach their business goals.