Breaking Barriers with a New Benchmark for the Beauty Industry

Beauty brands, media companies and misplaced “norms” have created an impossible beauty standard, leaving a tremendous pressure to keep up. As a purpose-driven brand with a history of shifting business processes for the betterment of consumers’ health, in 2018, CVS aimed to address a growing mental health concern with the introduction of its Beauty Mark initiative - a commitment to transparency in beauty imagery. 

Kaplow launched this initiative through a targeted, multi-media communications strategy with a segment on national news, an in-store activation with a panel featuring Katie Couric, brand executives and celebrity spokespeople and in-depth content across media, experiential marketing, paid social, organic social, owned channels and in-store events. Following this major splash at launch, the campaign continued throughout 2019 with influencer partners who continue to promote the Beauty Mark and share their unaltered imagery. 

Since then, the campaign has penetrated new demographics and industry stakeholders through continuous thought leadership storytelling and advocacy from thousands of beauty and mental health influencers over the course of five milestones - up until most recently, the fifth anniversary of the campaign in May 2023. 

The integrated program continues to ignite widespread industry awareness and robust online and offline word-of-mouth conversation, as evident by the strong, measurable results to-date.