SK-II

The objective

Luxury skincare full-funnel activation

SK-II is a prestige skincare brand focused on helping preserve youthful skin. Each bottle of SK-II essence contains 90% PITERA™, a natural bioingredient that is cultured and created in Japan for SK-II. It has been the gold standard for anti-aging for more than 40 years.

As a category leader with high visibility in Asia, SK-II saw the US as its next frontier for growing new users. The brand recognized TikTok provided opportunity to reach a new audience, the luxury “Zillennial” consumer, in a meaningful way while increasing brand awareness.

For this campaign, SK-II's goals were threefold: test the impact of TikTok Pulse and full-funnel media on driving results; increase brand awareness and consideration in the US by reaching qualified users on TikTok; and drive conversions by leveraging purchase intent signals to reach high-income users.

The solution

Testing TikTok Pulse for a creator-led campaign

To achieve these goals, SK-II launched a full-funnel campaign consisting of In-Feed Ads and first-in-industry TikTok Pulse, a new contextual advertising solution that lets advertisers place their brand next to the top trending content in the For You Feed. SK-II saw the new solution as bold and innovative, alike the brand’s own purpose.

Leveraging an integrated communication approach via the TikTok Experience Planning program (TTxP), members of the SK-II agency and client teams came together to center the campaign around "pausing" aging skin in time using SK-II products.

The brand partnered with top beauty and skincare creators like Aissata Diallo (@aissatadiallo) and Amy Chang (@bondenvant). The creators filmed themselves using SK-II to keep their skin soft, youthful and radiant. These assets, coupled with a more traditional branded video, were used as the campaign's In-Feed Ads.

Tapping into science-backed skincare and #DermTok, the campaign also featured a video of Dr. Mamina Turegano, a board-certified dermatologist. This asset explained the scientific research behind SK-II and how she incorporates it into her routine, and it was featured as the hero video within the premium TikTok Pulse placement.”

The results

Lasting results

Powered by TikTok Pulse, the strategy brought “Skin Pausing” directly to its Zillennial audience who responded enthusiastically, with some calling it "the best ad they’ve ever seen."

Between December and January, the campaign earned over 45 million video views and over 100,000 sessions across all TikTok creator content. It also scored close to 400,000 engagements, logging an engagement rate of 8.1% from organic views.

The campaign had a positive impact on awareness that drove a significant increase in organic search intent and site traffic. Brand searches for SK-II increased by 35%, whiles searches for PITERA™, the core unique ingredient of SK-II, improved by 18%. The SK-II website also saw 1.5x more visitors.