Rare Beauty did not enter the beauty market to overtake it. It entered with a mission and a desire to give visibility to underrepresented segments of society.
And it worked out well for Rare Beauty because around the time of Rare Beauty’s launch, there were many other celebrity brands existing in the market and they had started to feel interchangeable. The same flawless visuals and the same bid for perfection weren’t resonating with the audience.
We have seen some brands manage to find their mark in the market. For example, e.l.f. earned trust by letting creators lead, Fenty beauty made its mark by making representation non-negotiable. and TIRTIR proved that advertising, when done honestly, can overcome the social feeds faster than traditional ads.
Similarly, Rare Beauty followed the same principles but took a different route. Instead of selling perfection, it built it’s brand around self-acceptance and emotional honesty. That decision pushed the brand beyond a $2.5 billion valuation.
Now, Rare Beauty is still working on the same principles and winning the marketing game. Rare Beauty uses social search and storytelling with an ease that feels rare in itself.
In this breakdown, you will learn:
- How Rare Beauty turned marketing into a scalable social engine
- How Selena Gomez functions as a signal, not the sales pitch
- And how brands and businesses can apply this strategy
Let’s get into it.
Rare Beauty Beginnings and Story
Founded by Selena Gomez in 2020, the brand asked a simple question: What if beauty stopped asking people to fix themselves?
By the time Rare Beauty launched, the industry was still dominated by ideals of polish and perfection. Makeup was positioned as a transformation, something to correct, conceal, or upgrade who you already were. Rare Beauty chose a different lane. It set out to challenge those norms by building a brand around self-acceptance, emotional honesty, and comfort in one’s own skin.
Selena Gomez has spent most of her adult life under extreme visibility, with her appearance, body, and identity scrutinized in real time. Over the years, she has spoken openly about mental health, vulnerability, and the pressure to meet impossible standards. Rare Beauty became a way to translate those conversations into something tangible. Not a health-led brand, but a safe space within beauty.
“Being rare is about being comfortable with yourself. I’ve stopped trying to be perfect. I just want to be me.” — Selena Gomez
That philosophy became the core of the brand. It explains why Rare Beauty does not chase hyper-polish, why it prioritises accessibility in design, and why its marketing feels more human than performative.
Rare Beauty’s marketing, branding, and creator strategy all follow this core idea.
Rare Beauty Marketing Strategy: The System Behind the Brand
Rare Beauty’s growth came from a system designed to align brand belief, creator behaviour, and modern discovery patterns. Each part of the strategy reinforces the next, which is why the brand has been able to scale without losing credibility.
1. Positioning First, Promotion Second
Rare Beauty made its most important decision before it ever launched a campaign. It chose what it would stand for, and just as importantly, what it would not.
Instead of positioning makeup as a tool for transformation or correction, the brand centered itself around self-acceptance and emotional honesty. This immediately separated Rare Beauty from the dominant beauty narrative, which still leaned heavily on perfection and hiding behind the veil of perfection.
This clarity of narrative gave every future marketing decision a lens. Now, content, creators, and campaigns only move forward if they reinforce the same emotional position with which the brand started.
Adhering to its core principles is why Rare Beauty’s marketing feels consistent across time and platforms.
2. Turning Values Into Visible Proof
Rare Beauty believes in advocating the normalisation of mental health conversations within the beauty community.
Mental health advocacy is one of the core brand values. The brand does it through Rare Impact Fund, which commits one percent of all sales to mental health initiatives.
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The second core value of the brand is Inclusivity, which was established early by launching with forty-eight foundation shades right when they launched, instead of an afterthought.
The third core value is accessibility, which is visible in disability friendly packaging designed for ease of use rather than visual excess.
@sarahtoddhammer Replying to @k3m3_22 NOT SPONSORED – product was gifted to me for free by Rare Beauty. Opinions are my own 🙂 [Video Description: ST, a young white woman with long blonde hair, is speaking on screen. As she speaks, she tries out the new Rare Beauty perfume. Text on screen at the beginning of the video reads “How accessible is the brand new Rare Beauty perfume?” Text on screen throughout the video reads “NO ADVICE PLEASE”] #DisabilityTikTok #DisabilityAwareness @Rare Beauty ♬ original sound – ST Hammer
This adherence to its values, both in what the brand showed publicly and what it did behind the scenes, earned Rare Beauty trust. When creators and consumers talked about Rare Beauty’s values, they were pointing to real decisions the brand had made, not repeating marketing claims. Trust was earned through what the brand did, not what it said.
3. Creator-Led Storytelling as the Primary Growth Driver
Rare Beauty does not treat creators as an amplification channel. It treats them as the core storytellers of the brand’s launches and product narratives, with Selena Gomez anchoring that storytelling through her presence and lived perspective.
From the beginning, the brand prioritized creators who already spoke about beauty in a natural, relatable way, while Selena set the emotional tone by sharing her own relationship with the products and the ideas behind them. Rather than scripting content, Rare Beauty allowed creators to demonstrate products in real routines, using their own language and environments, reinforced by Selena’s hands-on involvement in how products were introduced and discussed.
Source: Rare Beauty TikTok
Over time, this creator-led approach became Rare Beauty’s strongest growth engine. It built trust, increased watch time, and aligned seamlessly with how people now discover, compare, and evaluate beauty products on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
The Every Side of You campaign marked a moment where Rare Beauty scaled its message without changing it.
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Instead of positioning confidence as a fixed or aspirational state, the campaign focused on emotional duality. Strength and vulnerability were treated as equally valid experiences, reflecting the way Rare Beauty had already been discussed by creators and consumers across social platforms.
Selena Gomez’s role in the campaign was intentional. Her voice anchored the message and connected it back to the brand’s core belief in self-acceptance, while the visuals remained grounded in everyday moments.
How Rare Beauty Uses AI to Reach the Next Generation of Shoppers
The beauty space is overflowing, and Gen Z browses differently than any generation before.
As CMO Katie Welch explains:
“Gen Z is the hardest generation to market to… They want to take a picture of a product, find a review, and get that information right away.”
So Rare Beauty turned to AI-powered advertising with Google to show up in the exact moments people are looking for answers.
Searches now sound more like conversations, with queries such as
- “What is the best blush for my dry skin type?”
- “Which product gives a natural finish?”
With the rise in large language models like ChatGPT, searching on the internet is becoming conversational. This shift is called Social Search. Gen Z increasingly uses platforms like TikTok and Instagram as search engines. Read more about Social Search & How TikTok, Instagram & YouTube Are Rewriting the Marketing Funnel.
According to Social Search, Gen Z is turning to creators to answer questions, compare products, and validate decisions in real time. Rare Beauty built its strategy around this shift early, treating social content as both discovery and conversion.
Rare Beauty paired YouTube with Google Search and used AI to deliver the right creative to the right person at the right moment. Their AI-powered Search strategy now delivers a 7X return on ad spend.
Even with a small budget, you can use AI-powered targeting through Google or TikTok. Create ads based on real search behavior like “best moisturiser for dry skin,” “how to shape brows naturally,” etc.
Top Rare Beauty Campaigns
Rare Beauty uses campaigns to scale its existing brand narrative rather than introduce new positioning. Each campaign reinforces the same core ideas: self-acceptance, emotional honesty, and community-led storytelling.
Every Side of You
Every Side of You was Rare Beauty’s first global brand campaign and sat under the brand’s long-running Love Your Rare platform.
The campaign centered on emotional duality rather than aspirational confidence. Strength and vulnerability were presented as equally valid experiences. A 60-second spot, voiced by Selena Gomez, featured a diverse cast applying Rare Beauty products while acknowledging different emotional states. The message reinforced the brand’s belief that beauty should support, not mask, real life.
Selena Gomez’s role was to anchor the message, not dominate it. Her voice connected the campaign to the brand’s founding values, while the visuals remained grounded in everyday moments. Because the tone matched existing creator content across TikTok and Instagram, the campaign integrated naturally into social feeds and reinforced ongoing creator-led narratives.
Soft Pinch Liquid Blush
The Soft Pinch Liquid Blush became one of Rare Beauty’s most recognisable products through creator-led discovery rather than a traditional campaign rollout.
Creators demonstrated the product’s performance through simple, repeatable formats, often showing a single dot of pigment blended out on camera. These demonstrations highlighted texture, payoff, and ease of use without scripted messaging. The format was easy to replicate across skin tones and routines, which helped it spread organically on TikTok.
Rare Beauty allowed this behaviour to scale without over-directing it. The product’s performance carried the message, and creators drove distribution. Utility, rather than branding language, became the primary driver of attention and trust.
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Rare Impact–Aligned Activations
Rare Beauty’s campaign strategy also includes activations tied directly to its mental health commitment.
Through the Rare Impact Fund, the brand commits one percent of all sales to expanding access to mental health resources. This commitment appears consistently across content, partnerships, and community-facing moments rather than being limited to a single awareness campaign.
These activations provide creators and consumers with tangible proof of the brand’s values. As a result, discussions around mental health and self-acceptance are ground, in real action, reinforcing credibility and long-term trust.
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5 Rare Beauty Takeaways for Marketers
Rare Beauty’s success is built on a set of habits, repeatable patterns that make the brand feel human, intentional, and easy to trust.
Here are the five core ideas behind those habits, each one translated into something your brand can apply this week.
1. Build a Brand People Can Feel, Not Just Describe
Rare Beauty doesn’t lead with product. It leads with values like self-acceptance and honesty. Their content works because people understand the feeling the brand represents long before they understand the features.
Ask yourself: If someone had to explain how our brand feels in one sentence, what would they say?
If that answer isn’t clear, your marketing will struggle to stick.
2. Turn Your Values Into Visible Proof
Rare Beauty doesn’t say it’s inclusive; it designs inclusively.
It doesn’t say it cares about mental health; it funds mental health programs.
Values become believable only when audiences can see the receipts.
Pick one value and find a way to express it through something tangible. It can be packaging, partnerships, product choices, or the way your founder shows up online.
3. Show Up in the Exact Moment Your Audience Needs You
Rare Beauty treats intent as a moving target, early curiosity, mid-scroll inspiration, and last-minute comparisons. Using AI-powered ads, they slip into each of those moments with messages that match what the shopper is thinking.
Map out the “micro-moments” in your customer journey:
- When do they look for help?
- When do they compare brands?
- When do they get stuck?
Then craft creatives that answer those questions directly.
4. Let Real People Carry the Message
Selena drives awareness, but creators drive conversions. Rare Beauty’s audience trusts the girl filming in her bedroom more than a glossy studio campaign — because she feels close, familiar, believable.
Shift your thinking from influencers with reach to influencers with relevance.
Start with five creators who genuinely love your product and build from there.
To streamline your influencer partnerships, explore our guide to Micro-Influencer Marketing Strategies or dive into the Best Examples of Creative Influencer Marketing Campaigns for inspiration.
5. Keep Testing Until Something Feels Effortless
Rare Beauty constantly experiments with length, format, hooks, and platforms. They know Gen Z prefers quick cuts and “show me, don’t tell me” content, so they meet them there, short clips, soft lighting, real textures.
Create a “creative lab.” Each month:
- Test 3–5 short-form variations
- Try a new hook
- Swap in a different creator
- Experiment with a new platform feature
- You can also experiment with how influencer content, paid media boosting, and paid social ads work together to lift your results
Small adjustments often reveal your next breakthrough.
Conclusion
If you want to build a creator strategy with the same clarity and community power Rare Beauty uses, House of Marketers can help. As a global TikTok marketing agency, we specialise in TikTok influencer campaigns and performance strategies that blend storytelling with data.
From d’Alba’s global skincare growth to Invoice Fly’s 70K+ downloads and NN Insurance’s 6.9M video views, our campaigns prove how structured influencer systems deliver consistent ROI and lasting brand equity.
Contact House of Marketers today to translate your brand’s values into meaningful audience engagement and real, lasting growth.
House of Marketers (HOM) is a leading TikTok Marketing Agency. Our global agency was built by early TikTok Employees & TikTok Partners, which gives us the insider knowledge to help leading brands, like Redbull, Playtika, Badoo, and HelloFresh win on TikTok. Want us to convert more of Gen Z and Millennials with TikTok? Get in touch with our friendly team, here.