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In my eight years of researching creator marketing, it’s always been pretty clear who social media’s biggest beauty brand is, at least when you’re going off of key metrics like EMV, engagement, and impressions. There’s usually a top dog setting the pace, with the rest of the industry jostling to keep up.
For my first several years on this side of the social feed, back circa 2016-2018, that top brand was Anastasia Beverly Hills. Afterwards, ColourPop had its time in the sun. In September 2020, Rare Beauty burst onto the scene, and while it took a while to rise to the No. 1 spot, Selena Gomez did claim it eventually, and Rare Beauty closed down 2023 as the standard-bearer for beauty. But since then we’ve seen another shift, as you might have guessed from the title of this blog post.
So yes, there is indeed “A New No. 1 Brand For Beauty.” And you’re not going to believe it, but it’s also the brand I’m going to be talking about this week. What a coincidence!
The Top Brand of All Time (Of the Week): Charlotte Tilbury
There’s the big reveal, folks: we do have a new No. 1 brand, and her name is Charlotte. (It’s nice to have an actual name back on top, by the way. Anastasia and Charlotte have a more natural ring to them than ‘Colour’ and ‘Rare.’)
Charlotte Tilbury was founded in 2013 by a British makeup artist named—and you’re not going to believe it, but here’s another coincidence—Charlotte Tilbury! Having gotten her start as a makeup artist and an OG Beauty Creator thanks to her popular YouTube channel BERTIE IRL (it was 2012, okay?), Charlotte (the person) was well-positioned to distribute Charlotte (the brand) products via the U.K.’s top retailers. It wasn’t long before Charlotte Tilbury (the brand from now on) caught on as a viral sensation and internet favorite—a status further cemented by the brand’s $1.2B acquisition by Puig in 2020.
With a deal like that, and the brand’s >$400M revenue haul in 2022 (per Statista), Charlotte Tilbury isn’t only beauty’s biggest name—it’s also a certified global enterprise, aka CreatorIQ’s favorite type of company.
But how did Charlotte Tilbury sneak up and steal Rare Beauty’s crown?
Top 10 Beauty Brands by EMV: Jan - Aug 2024
We see from the above chart that Charlotte Tilbury has pulled ahead YTD, albeit by a narrow margin ($417.3M EMV vs. $393.2M EMV). But first, let’s level-set. Here’s how Charlotte Tilbury has grown from 2018 to 2023 in terms of Earned Media Value…
Charlotte Tilbury EMV Growth: 2018 - 2023
Community Size...
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Charlotte Tilbury Community Growth: 2018 - 2023
And Content Volume…
Charlotte Tilbury Community Growth: 2018 - 2023
You’ll note that Content Volume fluctuates a little more than the graphs of EMV and Community Size, which are more in keeping with the smooth, uninterrupted growth patterns I love to highlight in these blogs. In fact, despite Charlotte Tilbury’s impressive growth, the brand actually garnered fewer mentions in 2023 than in 2022.
As you might have guessed—and no points for you if you did—TikTok was a big factor not only in Charlotte Tilbury’s broader rise, but in this post count discrepancy specifically. If we go back and look at the last 12 months (September 2023 to August 2024), we’ll get a clearer picture of the platform dynamics pushing the brand to new heights:
Charlotte Tilbury Stats by total for Instagram & TikTok
We see it all the time for brands in many verticals, and it’s especially stark here: across the board (except for Number of Creators), Instagram metrics declined. Meanwhile, TikTok carried the day, often boasting triple-digit growth, along with a clean doubling of the platform’s post count. It’s pretty clear where the momentum lies. Also worth noting: TikTok can drive equal or greater engagement and impressions as Instagram, but with far fewer posts and creators.
Another factor behind the boom for Charlotte Tilbury? In the past year, the brand has pushed past the finish line thanks to an influx of generative new creators. It’s not just a matter of consistent creators upping their posting habits—it’s Charlotte Tilbury’s ability, after all these years, to still appeal to a wider audience.
Charlotte Tilbury Creator Status
Here we can see the number of creators—and EMV generated by—the same cohort from September 2022 to August 2023 and then again from September 2023 to August 2024. This consistent cohort, 11.8k creators in all, increased its total from $451.6M EMV to $460.2M EMV.
These are by no means bad numbers, but usually for a growing brand, consistent creators experience a larger surge. For Charlotte Tilbury, that momentum stemmed instead from newcomers, who powered $131.4M EMV—more than double the $57.9M EMV driven a year ago by creators who dropped off subsequently.
Who were these incoming creators? As you can see, there were 12.0k of them—almost perfectly balanced with Charlotte Tilbury’s 11.8k retained creators—and yet they produced roughly 30% of the retained cohort’s EMV. So you see, these incoming creators were smaller-scale than their consistent counterparts, but fewer followers didn’t equate to less passion. These creators were often micro-scale beauty gurus who consistently incorporated Charlotte Tilbury into their organic makeup looks, fomenting a grassroots enthusiasm that helped push Charlotte Tilbury over the top.
Much of that enthusiasm took root in Charlotte Tilbury’s extensive product offerings. With a murderer’s row of products, creators drew upon more than just the brand’s iconic Airbrush Flawless Setting Spray:
Charlotte Tilbury Top 5 EMV Driving Products
While the setting spray saw (say that five times fast) impressive YoY growth, the Lip Cheat Lip Liner also excelled, underscoring beauty’s recent trend toward lip products, even for brands primarily known for other offerings. Meanwhile, though the Pillow Talk declined somewhat, at $54.2M EMV, it’s still doing better than many beauty brands as a whole.
With $187.8M EMV from its top five products alone, Charlotte Tilbury is making a case for the deepest bench in beauty. I can think of few brands that see such pronounced content creation for so many products, rather than having activity concentrated around just a few hero products, or low-level activity for many smaller products. This wealth of options helps fuel creators’ inspiration for tutorials, sustaining a healthy activity cycle.
So Long For Now
That’s it for this week, folks. There’s never a dull moment for beauty, and never a dull moment for our friends in enterprise, so it stands to reason that if you bring them together, you get some fascinating stories. I for one can’t wait to see how Charlotte Tilbury fares from here—because if we know anything, it’s that beauty is a fickle mistress, and the new No. 1 might be right around the corner.
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