The company — which was the biggest beauty manufacturer by sales in 2022, per Beauty Inc’s annual ranking of the top 100 beauty manufacturers — is seeing uncommon, cross-category growth in earned media value across its skin care, hair care and makeup portfolios, reports CreatorIQ.

According to CreatorIQ, McMichael has fueled more than $10.5 million in earned media value for beauty brands in 2023 — up from $2.5 million in 2022.

According to CreatorIQ, the Hong Kong-listed French skin care company owns the three fastest-growing skin care brands by earned media value — Sol de Janeiro, Erborian and L’Occitane en Provence — which have seen respective year-over-year EMV growth of 144 percent, 156 percent and 628 percent, respectively.

CreatorIQ’s Top 10 global beauty brands by Earned Media Value driven by creators with a >30 percent 35-plus audience…

CreatorIQ’s Top 10 global beauty brands by Earned Media Value driven by creators with a >30 percent 35-plus audience

According to CreatorIQ, Glossier’s earned media value grew 52 percent year-over-year between January and September. EMV assigns a unique value to a piece of content brd on engagement that this content receives from users (likes, comments, shares, views), as well as the platform that this content was published on (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and attributes that value to brands mentioned in this content.

Liu’s experience at Sephoria was a hybrid of awareness-building and social listening, she said. “We use Tribe [Dynamics], so I think about it from an EMV point of view and social awareness. The other part is it’s a sampling opportunity. It’s hard to get samples in the hands of the right people… and my marketing director asked every single person in line for samples if they had heard of Tower 28.”

The top beauty brands by EMV gained in August, and each brand’s year-over-year change in the metric…

“Historically, October and December tend to be big months for beauty EMV, largely due to Halloween and Christmas promotions,” said Alexander Rawitz, director of content marketing at CreatorIQ, Tribe Dynamics’ parent company.

“After much debate and controversy surrounding splashy influencer getaways like #TrippinWithTarte, it’s clear that creators and consumers still engage with the content,” said Alex Rawitz, director of content marketing at CreatorIQ.

According to influencer marketing platform Tribe Dynamics, McMichael powered a total $2.5 million in earned media value for beauty brands in 2022, which marked the year she graduated with her nursing degree from Rutgers University and subsequently began pursuing content creation full time.

Data from Tribe Dynamics shows that its earned media value last year was just over $71 million, less than half of its $152 million peak in 2019.

“They’re treading water from a social perspective,” said Conor Begley, Tribe’s founder. “That being said, we find that the brands that do well with social media tend to do well with specialty retailers… retail is almost as much a marketing channel as it is a distribution channel. Getting your product in front of a lot of people creates credibility for the brand.”

And while the trip’s sales impact remains to be seen, data from Tribe Dynamics indicates Tarte did in fact reap the benefits of an upswing in social media engagement, nearly doubling its earned media value month-over-month.

EMV assigns a unique value to a piece of content based on engagement that this content receives from users, as well as the platform that this content was published on, and attributes that value to brands mentioned in this content.

As far as content goes, it’s content made by creators — not the brands themselves — that moves the needle the most. Brit Starr, senior vice president of strategy at CreatorIQ, said brands with big budgets are reaping rewards with rising engagement rates.

“Consumers became a lot more selective about the creators and brands that they align themselves with,” she said of social media’s shifting landscape. “We’re continuing to see increased investment in influencer marketing, increased attention to how to appropriately measure and understand the impact of your efforts so you can make the most informed decisions.