At the beginning of 2019, El Carousel was approached by the team at Benefit Cosmetics UK, the UK's number one premium makeup brand, and tasked with taking their live content to the next level. As long time users of Facebook and Instagram Live, where they had led the way in the beauty space, they were keen to see how they could take things further. As a brand that is constantly disrupting and pushing boundaries, there was scope to create a truly different campaign.
The brief was to support the launch of Cheek Leaders, new blush, bronze and highlighter palettes, which came in two varieties; Cheek Leaders Pink Squad and Cheek Leaders Bronze Squad.
From the brief The Cheek Leaders Championships was born, a weekend event that pitched the Pink Squad against the Bronze Squad; all of which was filmed and live streamed.
Each squad was headed up by a top beauty influencer, and were made up of members of their community, which they won places for via a series of social competitions. The Championships were then hosted at a venue in the Lake District and ran from Friday to Sunday.
The three days involved four Facebook Lives, a YouTube Live and a stream of real time edits, including daily wrap ups and showreels from each of the lives. For each live, we utilised a three camera crew and a drone, with all footage feeding through to a live vision mixing desk, with an output direct to Facebook or YouTube.
The biggest challenge of the weekend was the remote location, which required the use of a satellite uplink truck to ensure the live content went out without interruption or down time.
The events included the Cookie Challenge, tying into a product within one of the palettes, the All-A-BeneBoard, which involved the teams paddle boarding across a lake, a Cheer Challenge, the Great Benefit Cheek Off, which was our version of a quiz show, the Cheeky Chase, a full scale obstacle course, and a final awards ceremony. For each activity, the aim was to create brilliant content while getting the viewers at home to engage.
Alongside the attached wrap up video, you can view the individual live streams here:
Cookie Challenge >> https://bit.ly/2JJ20cZ
All-A-BeneBoard >> https://bit.ly/2LRZJ1A
Great Benefit Cheek Off >> https://bit.ly/2xMK8YT
Cheeky Chase >> https://bit.ly/2XJ70bq
Awards Ceremony >> https://bit.ly/2NV0dH1
The content produced over the course of the weekend reached 2.8m people organically and generated 158k engagements. The contestants shared over 250 pieces of content, and the two influencers 82 posts, which generated over 380k engagements. Two videos posted to Instagram as part of the Cheer Challenge became the best performing post ever for Benefit, with a reach of 256k and an engagement rate of 2.71%, well above the brand's average.
