TLDR: A deep dive into the viral marketing stunt that dominated our page this week - European Wax Center’s response to SKIMS’ new launch - featuring an interview with their VP of Marketing, Carly Tietzer. It’s a full behind-the-scenes look at how it came to life, including a special look at their Teams chat when the Kim Kardashian repost happened.
There was one post this week that completely dominated our feed - with over 3,805+ shares (and counting!) - and for good reason:
For context, earlier this week, SKIMS announced the launch of “The Ultimate Bush,” their new faux-hair panty. They described it as their “most daring panty yet”: a string thong, hand-made with a sheer, stretch mesh material and a mix of curly and straight faux hair, available in twelve colors:
SKIMS dropped the launch with a stylized campaign video (see above) on Instagram, and, of course, the internet exploded with instant controversy. Comments flooded in: “Who asked for this??” and “Kim - I don’t have time for this.” Even Robyn Delmonte, known for her more professional marketing and consumer take, weighed in. She argued that SKIMS should be taking more artistic risks, rather than chasing virality for virality’s sake with these new launches - after all, SKIMS is hardly suffering from a cultural relevance problem right now:
But regardless of the commentary, the products sold out immediately. Call it a marketing tactic if you want, but there’s still something to be said about the success of their drops and what that says about consumer culture.
We’re not here to dissect the SKIMS launch. What we are here to talk about is what happened next: one of the most top-tier reactive marketing stunts of the year, brought to us by European Wax Center. They jumped into the cultural moment with an incredibly clever OOH campaign and totally nailed it.
For us, the magic was two-fold. First: the speed. As many of you noted, it was shocking how quickly their team saw what was happening, reacted, ideated, and executed a campaign, all within less 24 hours. We rarely see a brand move that fast, especially one of their size - it’s truly remarkable.
Second: the surprise. European Wax Center is definitely making strides to insert themself into pop culture (more on that later), but it’s safe to say most consumers probably didn’t expect the brand to come out swinging like this. And that’s exactly why it hit so hard: the thrill of the surprise.
