L’Oréal created a brand new and unique haircare conditioner, L’Oréal Paris Elvive - Wonder Water. The product’s liquid formula looks like water, and provides an 8-second hair transformation. The product had already been launched in the US and L’Oréal was looking to launch it in the UK in February 2021. As the product was a new category in the market (liquid conditioner) and unknown in the UK, the brand wanted to educate the audience on exactly what it is and how it works.

The focus was to create a seismic impact within younger women, ultimately driving to brand advocacy. The campaign’s key objectives were to tease the launch of L’Oreal Elvive - Wonder Water, create awareness, excitement and curiosity about the product, and ultimately achieve sales uplift via e-commerce.

What better way to convey a product that works wonders in just 8 seconds than through content digestible in a few seconds, too?

Our data and market research pointed to the boosted popularity of TikTok challenges, so that was the direction we decided to take. However, TikTok trends change fast and tapping into old trends it’s no use in TikTok. So, inspired by the ATL creative idea and recent trends, we put our creativity to work by thinking like true TikTokers, and created the #WonderWaterWhip challenge to showcase how fast Wonder Water transforms people’s hair.

But why limit the campaign to TikTok only? With content posted across TikTok and Instagram, we could have an extra layer of awareness by reaching non-overlapping audiences, and could make use of Instagram’s swipe up links—an organic conversion feature that, at the time of the campaign, TikTok didn’t offer.

We’ve all seen that quintessential L’Oréal moment. Shiny glossy locks that glides past the camera, enticing the viewer. The majority of us have tried to recreate our own wonderful L’Oréal moment at home but we couldn’t seem to capture that exact same feel.

Well, this campaign was about to change that.

We’ve studied TikTok and L’Oréal social channels, and applied the best practices to the challenge (factors like when to introduce the product in the content and how to position it).

So, we’ve created L’Oréal’s first ever TikTok Challenge, the #WonderWaterWhip.

With a bespoke soundtrack and dance routine, we engaged 12 UK influencers to create 30 pieces of content across TikTok and Instagram. With reaches varying from 24K to 11M followers, we worked with small and big names within the UK beauty scene, who created authentic and fun content that resonated with their community.

The influencers started with showing their dull and lifeless hair to then turn their head around for a slow motion hair flip. The flip started with dull hair and ended with beautiful hair—all while holding a bottle of Wonder Water in their hand. With hair so silky and smooth they were whippin’ their locks with wonder, and everyone wanted to do the same.

When it comes to TikTok, failure might be random, but success always has some kind of logic. With this in mind, we built the challenge for sound as a key component to make it stand out. We created a banging 15-second track featuring distinct female singers who had enough creative freedom to freestyle their way into the final track. Additionally, by keeping the moves in the challenge simple but highly imitable, we could increase the chances of UGC.

The campaign overperformed massively against our KPIs. The exposure of the campaign was incredible as it succeeded to garner 4.6M Impressions (+457% of KPIs), partly thanks to 38 extra pieces of content, representing 230% in earned media and 1.1M earned impressions, and partly because the content resonated really well with audiences.

Additionally, with 261.3K likes, comments and shares, the influencers overperformed the engagement KPI by 423%, reaching an engagement rate of 8.2% (+3.2% of target). Out of the total comments, 8.6% were brand-related, more than quadrupling our 2% target, and the campaign sentiment was 99.2% positive.

The dynamic movement within the Challenge created a huge impact on TikTok, where there are over 1,140 UGC videos under the hashtag #WonderWaterWhip (including a lot of memes about it), resulting in +4.5B TikTok views for L’Oréal.