Coty Acquires Content Marketing Agency Beamly

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No sooner than I hit publish on my last post about Clinique’s new blog The Wink, I discovered that another beauty company is investing in content marketing. Coty announced on October 19, their acquisition of digital marketing and content agency Beamly, based in New York and London. This is a big deal for the future of beauty brands. It’s no longer enough to simply be online, but now brands must engage, interact and create experiences for their customers.

Beamly’s main focus is on driving audience growth and engagement for consumer brands across the digital space. This is a big step for Coty, on the heels of their P&G acquisition, they  are the first among the big beauty companies to acquire a content marketing agency. Coty and its many licensed brands “will benefit from Beamly’s suite of social data benchmarking, content creation, content optimization and consumer engagement tools to deliver Coty’s brand strategies.”

Coty’s current roster of brands plus the 42 newly acquired brands from the P&G deal have positioned the beauty conglomerate as one of the leading global beauty companies. Competitors L’Oréal and Estée Lauder, both known for best in class digital strategies, might face increasing competition from Coty as they work with the Beamly team to become a digital content and marketing powerhouse.

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Pretty Well…Connected

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What does it mean to be a digital beauty brand? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the cross-section of beauty and tech. I think tech is such a huge part of our lives and it seems like there are new products, advancements and experiences coming out every day. But what’s up with the beauty industry and why is it taking them longer to catch on to this movement? Well, there are a lot of reasons and I hope to explore some of them in future posts. On flip-side, brands like Sephora and L’Oreal are pioneering in digital and innovation—not just for the industry—but overall, they are setting standards for other brands to follow. According to a 2014 Beauty study by L2, “mass and prestige brands alike are innovating across the Site & E-Commerce, Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Mobile dimensions.” It’s great to see advancement, and L2 also notes that the digital investment is increasing throughout the industry.