Maybelline is well and truly the leader in Australian cosmetics, with an impressive market share and the #1 selling mascara products in the country. However, its brand health has been slowly declining with a younger audience (down 12.7% since 2020), as newer entrants touting DTC models, cheaper products and highly social profiles have been capturing the hearts, minds and wallets of the next generation. Maybelline knew it had to do something to defend its brand equity in this space, and looked towards gaming as a potential unexplored frontier to activate and grow relevance. 46% of gamers in Australia identify as female, with a strong overlap with the under 35 demographic that Maybelline needed to strengthen brand equity in.

Our objective was therefore to grow brand equity with the under 35 demographic, and to activate in the gaming space in a way that felt genuine and aligned to the brand.

Our approach was to launch “Through Their Eyes”, a thought provoking social experiment that showed male gamers what it was like to play through a woman’s eyes. Two Australian male gaming influencers had their real identities disguised with voice modification software and fake female profiles in an online first-person shooter. They experienced first-hand the terrible abuse and bullying experienced by female-identifying gamers.

The film strongly resonated with the online gaming community and beyond. Appreciating they’d been heard, female-identifying players shared the campaign along with their stories, many who had been hiding in silence, and millions of gamers, male and female alike, called for others to stand up and say something.

The creative strategy directly influenced the content - by focusing on the insight that female-identifying gamers hid themselves away, we were able to fully bring to life their experience and shine a light on the double standards within the environment.

The worlds of makeup and gaming don’t naturally intersect, and as such we started with a deep dive into understanding the lives of female gamers, to discover where we could play a meaningful role.

We commissioned research with a panel of more than 1000 gamers, and discovered that the experience of female identifying gamers was often fraught with abuse and harassment.

In particular, one statistic stood out. Whilst 83% of females had experienced abuse or harassment whilst playing games online, a staggering 90% had modified their behaviour by turning off their cameras or shutting down their voice commands in order to feel safe.

This felt like a significant strategic point of tension. For a brand whose purpose is all about giving people the confidence to express themselves and to play, how could we stand by and say nothing when our consumers were hiding themselves away to feel safe?

Maybelline wanted to activate in the gaming space to grow brand equity and sales with their under 35 demographic. The decision to focus on gamers was made due to the strong overlap between digitally savvy makeup buyers, and female gamers. However, having not activated in a meaningful way in gaming before, there were risks associated with such an approach - in particular being called out for grabbing at a market we had limited credibility with.

The creative challenge was therefore to activate in the gaming space in a way that felt genuine to the brand, and to our audience. Maybelline already had a clear purpose to assist with this“to give people the confidence to express themselves, create and play”.

The creative opportunity became clear when our commisioned research uncovered two alarming statistics, demonstrating that gaming was not an environment where our audience was confident or safe. Firstly 83% of female gamers recouned that they had experienced harassment, secondly a staggering 90% hid their identity to feel safe in online environments . This tension provided our creative problem and springboard - how could we encourage young people in online gaming spaces to feel safer, when they were literally hiding themselves away to avoid persecution?

We executed a thought provoking and confronting content film, Through Their Eyes, which saw male gaming influencers play a popular first person shooter online with voice alteration and female gaming profiles, to make them sound and appear female. Through the social experiment the two male gamers were subjected to a barrage of never before experienced harassment, all because they sounded female.

The approach was deliberately inclusive, with the social experiment being followed by a heartfelt discussion between our male gaming influencers, and two female identifying gaming influencers, on the problem of abuse in the online gaming space, and how to tackle it.

The response was astounding. Inspired by the content, gamers globally shared the video and their own stories of harassment. The campaign contributed towards a positive conversation about how to address abusive behaviour, and a shift in momentum towards a reduction in harassment online. We partnered with ReachOut - a well known mental health provider in Australia, to provide resources and a safe space gamers could go to share their experiences and seek support.

Some quotes from gamers show the impact this campaign had on making people feel seen and heard:

“This is so powerful. People underestimate what women go through on a daily basis using voice chat while gaming online… please watch all the way”.

“I don’t care if you’re a gamer, a parent of a gamer or none of the above, watch this video. Discrimination and harassment is never OK. Games have the power to be the ultimate leveller, and yet it seems we still have a long way to go”.

“This is truly eye opening”.

“It’s good to see big companies pick up on this problem in the gaming industry and show how it really is for us women. Thank you Maybelline”.

The meaningful brand metric increased 18% in our target audience of U35s. Brand health lifted by 12.1%, restoring it to levels not seen since 2020.

The campaign achieved 449.9M global impressions and an earned media reach of 276.5M+. It was featured in over 100 global publications, 29 being international gaming news outlets, achieving earned media reach of 65.2M+ gamers.

Research conducted in late 2023 showed a drop in abuse experienced from 83% to 74% in the female identifying community, with 1 in 10 gamers recalling the campaign unprompted a year after its release.

Maybelline achieved their highest ever market share the month of the campaign (51.93%), outpacing the market by 5x in unit sales, with +19.7% of market penetration YOY. This represented a ROI of 3.43.

It was one of three campaigns featured in the Insight & Strategy section of Contagious Quarterly (Q2/23).