‘Faces of Music’ won Gold in Content Fashion, Beauty & Lifestyle, and Silver in Content Video and Film, at The Drum Awards. This campaign by Digitas for Sephora aimed to reshape beauty’s cultural conversation, focusing on identity, transformation, and personal storytelling through a Hulu docuseries featuring artists Chappell Roan, Victoria Monét, and Becky G.
Leading a category means shaping its cultural conversation, but Sephora understands the challenge of capturing attention in today’s crowded space. To stand out with younger consumers—generations driven by self-expression and authenticity—Sephora needed to break away from traditional beauty campaigns.
Sephora’s answer was to focus on the deeper truth: beauty is about more than surface-level looks—it’s about identity, transformation, and personal storytelling. We set out to build a campaign that would position beauty as essential to self-expression and creativity, amplifying its emotional power in cultural conversation.
In a media landscape flooded with polished, short-form ads, younger consumers are hungry for raw, authentic storytelling. Sephora saw an opportunity to break through the noise by bringing together two of the most powerful forces in self-expression: beauty and music. For younger consumers, music isn’t just entertainment—it’s a core part of their identity, often shaped by the artists they obsess over.
Advertisement
And rather than add to the noise of quick, forgettable content, Sephora leaned into its legacy of democratizing beauty and creative play, choosing long-form storytelling as its medium.
Our strategy was to marry these worlds, converging music icons and multicultural voices with Sephora’s credibility as a beauty innovator and curator of trends. Our goal: break beyond traditional beauty conversations and spark cultural dialogue that’s raw, real, and in-tune with younger audiences’ appetite.
‘Faces of Music’ was born: a Hulu docuseries, directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ting Poo, that reimagines beauty as a tool for self-expression, creativity, and transformation. Partnering with breakthrough artists Chappell Roan, Victoria Monét, and Becky G—each with their own vibrant musical style and cultural background—the series invites fans into a deeply personal space.
Each episode begins with the artist bare-faced, sharing their own candid and personal journeys as they build up to their signature, iconic looks. Along the way, they reveal how beauty rituals and artistic expression have shaped their confidence and identity, both on and off the stage. Feeling more like a personal conversation than a campaign, the result wasn’t just authentic—it was binge-worthy.
To bring ‘Faces of Music’ to life, we built a multi-platform ecosystem that lived where our audience does—across streaming, social, and the real world. We launched the series on Hulu, delivering the long-form, binge-worthy storytelling Gen Z craves. With its stripped-down editing style, personal interviews, and ‘get ready with me’ (GRWM) narrative, each episode felt more like an intimate conversation than a traditional campaign.
We extended the docuseries with GRWM-inspired edits, behind-the-scenes cuts, and creator-style content tailored for TikTok and Instagram. Each artist was given creative freedom to bring their story to life, ensuring the content felt deeply personal, not just promotional. Lo-fi visuals, vertical video, and authentic voiceovers ensured content felt native, boosting shareability, engagement, and time spent.
The campaign strategically launched before the Grammys, tapping into peak community conversation around red carpet glam and the awards, aligning our message with a major cultural moment for organic buzz.
Advertisement
Eye-catching murals in high-foot-traffic areas doubled as social content generators and IRL buzz drivers, seamlessly blending digital and physical experiences.
‘Faces of Music’ set out to win over a younger audience and shape cultural conversation—and it exceeded expectations.
The docuseries drove 1.5M+ minutes watched on Hulu—a record for beauty content on the streaming platform—and ranked in Hulu’s Top 5 series in the ‘music’ category, with Gen Z leading the charge by over-indexing by 99% vs. the general population. Sephora saw a +9pt lift in Brand Consideration among Gen Z, successfully shifting perceptions and deepening Sephora’s connections with younger audiences.
Advertisement
With 719 million total impressions, the series earned glowing coverage in The New York Times, Billboard, and Teen Vogue, cementing Sephora’s position at the intersection of beauty, music, and culture.
Most importantly, the fans didn't just watch it—they fueled the conversation. Through 18,000 organic mentions, fans rallied behind their favorite artists, reposting clips and amplifying the series’ reach—the ultimate seal of approval—proving that ‘Faces of Music’ was a cultural phenomenon as relevant as the artists it celebrated.
Ready to get your work recognized on a global stage? Enter The Drum Awards today. Need more inspiration? Read our Award Winning Case Studies.
Digitas
Digitas is the Connected Marketing Agency, built on the principle that there are better ways for brands to connect with people and people with each other. Leveraging...