You can’t swatch a lipstick through a screen. Beauty shoppers know it, so they look for the next best thing: someone who has already put the product on their own skin. It’s even better if that “someone” is a creator whose judgment they already trust. 

In short: Rhode Beauty’s social media strategy runs on TikTok. Hailey Bieber starts the conversation, thousands of small creators make the product look widely used, repeat partners keep it familiar, and limited drops give people a reason to film. That system took Rhode from a single Instagram caption to an acquisition by e.l.f. Beauty valued at up to $1 billion.

In this Rhode Beauty case study, we cover how:

• A founder with an audience starts the conversation. (Founder-led marketing)
• Small creators make the product look like everyone already uses it. (Micro-influencer seeding and social proof marketing)
• Repeat creator partnerships make the brand familiar. (Long-term ambassador marketing)
• Trendy product drops give people a reason to film. (Product-led, drop-driven marketing)

At House of Marketers, we are a TikTok marketing agency and we build influencer campaigns like this for brands. Get your free campaign proposal here to learn more about how TikTok Marketing can be part of your brand’s social media strategy. 

So, let’s start from the basics.

How Did Hailey Bieber Launch Rhode Beauty on Social Media?

In January 2022, Hailey Bieber posted a photo with a caption telling fans to expect “glazed” skin all year and to tell a friend. She also tagged an Instagram account called @rhode. There was no product page to buy the product yet, just one of the most followed faces in beauty pointing her audience at an empty handle. That was influencer marketing at its simplest: a trusted voice, an audience, and an invitation to be curious.

Three years later, e.l.f. Beauty agreed to buy the brand. The deal was valued at up to $1 billion, with $212 million in net sales over the 12 months to March 2025. Rhode went from a caption to a billion-dollar exit in just over three years.

The reason is that Rhode never treated influencer marketing as a campaign it ran. It treated it as the way the brand got built. The founder was the first influencer, and everyone after her carried the story forward: creators of every size who made the product feel like something everyone already owned. 

The product is the starting point, but the brand itself is assembled from what people post about it: the founder’s routines, a small creator’s lip combo, a Strawberry Glaze unboxing, a restock-day reaction.

Thousands of recommendations from people the audience already trusted carried the brand, and they are the thread through the rest of this guide.

What Is Rhode Beauty’s Social Media Strategy?

On TikTok, Rhode’s strategy has four layers, and each one feeds the next.

• • a founder who gives the brand a face
• • creators who make it look like everyone already owns the product
• • repeat creators who keep it familiar
• • limited drops that give people a reason to film

Rhode’s audience is Gen Z and Millennials aged 18 to 34. They want minimalist, effective skincare, follow creators closely, and trust people over logos. They also use TikTok as a search engine, looking for a real person’s take before they buy. 

Social search catches demand early in the funnel. The scale of Rhode’s TikTok effort shows in the data. According to data, about 30,000 sponsored posts from 15.6K creators over 12 months, and 73.4% of them were on TikTok. Tubular Labs data, reported by Cosmetics Design Europe, shows Rhode earned 325 million TikTok views in 2024 and matched that total by late May 2025.

Let’s break down how each layer worked.

Rhode is Poster Child for Founder-led Marketing

Rhode had an already established celebrity to be the face of the brand. So its marketing started with Hailey Bieber’s own social media channels. Hailey Bieber documented her routines in “Get Ready With Me” style content and framed Rhode as a natural extension of her personal “glazed donut” look. That aesthetic was already moving online: TikTok videos tagged with the trend had passed 73 million views before the brand launched. Bieber’s Instagram following was in the tens of millions, and she used it as the launch channel.

Embed: YouTube

Her established celebrity status did two jobs. 

First, it gave Rhode instant exposure through Hailey herself. 

Second, it let her place the product in the hands of fellow celebrities, which turned Rhode into a cult item before most shoppers had tried it. 

Since then, she has stayed central to the marketing, appearing in campaign launches, GRWM videos, and lifestyle content where Rhode shows up without being the headline. Because her personal brand matches Rhode’s minimalist, chic look, followers read the posts as her life rather than an ad. That trust converts followers into customers.

Macro reach does what it is best at: it creates awareness fast. But reach alone does not explain Rhode. The next layer is where the brand built believability.

A founder with tens of millions of followers can start a conversation, but she can’t make a product feel like something everyone already owns. That job went to the creators who promoted the product by making UGC and get ready with me style content. 

Rhode Used Micro-Influencers to Generate Demand 

Rhode paired its macro reach with a much larger group of smaller accounts. On TikTok, its main channel, 36.8% of partnerships involve creators averaging 1K to 5K views per post, and another 12.5% involve creators averaging under 1K. Together that is nearly half of all TikTok partnerships (49.3%) going to very small accounts, while creators averaging over 500K views make up just 1.3%. 

Short-form video made that approach work, because a 15-second clip from a creator with a few thousand views reads as one person sharing what they use rather than a branded ad.

Rhode Seeded Product to Taste-Makers and Small Creators to Build Demand

Rhode prioritised targeted seeding over a big paid roster. Products went to taste-makers whose style already matched the brand, including Matilda Djerf and Claudia Schiffer, and to a long tail of smaller creators.

The seeding was not random, and research explains why it works. Work on influencer authenticity (Pöyry et al., 2019) finds that promoted content persuades more when it fits the creator’s usual style, interests and identity. When the product looks like it belongs in the creator’s world, the audience reads it as a recommendation rather than an ad.

On TikTok, which is the brand’s main channel, 37.8% of partnerships involve creators averaging 1K to 5K views per post, and another 11.9% involve creators averaging under 1K. Together that is nearly half of all TikTok partnerships going to very small accounts. Rhode’s UGC content creation strategy comes down to two things: posts that are easy for creators to copy, and language that is easy for the algorithm to read.

Rhode Fostered Repeated Creators Partnerships to Build Brand Recall

Rhode’s launch seeding creates a burst. A small core of repeat creators keeps the brand in the feed afterwards. House of Marketers’ Cal AI case study shows the same logic being used in the health and fitness category. Cal AI built a retained network of more than 300 creator partnerships, and the repetition is what made the product feel familiar. 

The lesson is the ratio. Wide seeding builds reach, and a core of repeat creators turns that reach into familiarity. Audience trust is part of what a brand pays for when they create a UGC partnership, and retained creators who stay familiar to their audience convert better than distant ones.

Need help looking for the best beauty influencer marketing agencies? Check out our ranked list below:

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What are Rhode Beauty’s Most Viral Product Launch Campaigns?

Rhode marketing campaigns have caused a buzz at every product launch. Here are few below so we can see how Rhode’s launches are built so that making content about them is easy. 

A drop has a date, a name people already recognise, and a product small enough to film in a single clip. A creator doesn’t need a brief to make a good video of it. They need a reason to post right now, and Rhode hands them one every time.

That is what turns a product launch into a trend.

Each one of the campaigns below made it easy for a fan to try the brand, whether that meant buying or just posting a reaction.

• 2026: the summer collection. Rhode launched its first bronzer and highlighter on 9 June 2026, alongside a multi-city pop-up tour across the US and Europe. 

• 2025: the Sephora launch. Rhode launched at Sephora North America on 4 September and made $15 million in 24 hours. In 2025, there was a  107% surge in Rhode post volume, which can be attributed to creator communities talking about Rhode online.

• 2024: The Lip Case. Rhode teased a $35 phone case built to hold a lip tint, then tied its sale to the restock of four tinted lip treatments. Hailey Bieber used it at the Super Bowl, and Rhode posted the footage as a “mid-game touch up.”gaining more than 60 million views on her original teaser.

• 2023: the Strawberry Glaze drop. Rhode partnered with Krispy Kreme, which temporarily brought back its Strawberry Glaze donut while the lip treatment was on sale. This made the #strawberrygirlmakeup tag reach 8.8M views in three weeks. The original run sold out within hours and was restocked weeks later.

Rhode is not the only brand that does this. House of Marketers’ Crumbl case study shows how a pink box and a weekly flavour drop created a ritual that creators were happy to film for free.

Lessons for Beauty Brands from Rhode’s TikTok Marketing Strategy

Beauty is a category where the buyer can’t try the product before paying. A shade, a texture or a “does this sting” question gets answered by someone who has already used it, and a banner ad can’t offer that proof. That is why TikTok works so well here: one clip shows the product and vouches for it in the same ten seconds. Five things are worth taking from Rhode:

• Design for the camera. Small, tactile products with recognisable packaging are easy to film in a swipe, a stack or an unboxing, so creators need no script.
• Give creators a format to repeat. Simple, copyable patterns like a lip combo or a product reveal let hundreds of small accounts post the same product without it feeling copied.
• Make every post point back. Creators tag both the brand and the founder, so each clip sends viewers to Rhode and to Hailey Bieber at once.
• Let small creators carry the volume. Many modest posts read as ordinary shoppers sharing what they use.
• Plan for reuse before the brief goes out. Secure usage rights and a clear format so the best posts can keep working through paid media boosting after the organic wave ends.

Most brands don’t have a Celebrity founder, and Rhode’s data suggests they don’t need one to copy the engine. A founder lights the match, but the volume comes from small creators and a core of repeat partners. A brand without a famous face can start the same way: gift product to a few dozen creators whose style already fits, give them one simple format to repeat, and keep working with the ones who perform.

If you want a clear view of where your current creator program is leaving results behind, that is exactly what we help brands work through as a TikTok marketing agency. Get in touch for a free campaign proposal.

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