Expanding horizons: Beauty brands embracing crossover marketing as boundaries between wellness, lifestyle blur

Crossover marketing is a strategy that involves partnerships between companies that may not traditionally work together but can benefit from each other’s customer bases. These collaborations can result in unique and appealing products or campaigns.

Speaking on the Beauty 4.0 Podcast​, veteran marketer Dave McCaughan, highlighted the opening of a bookstore by Chinese fragrance label as an example of effective crossover marketing.

“I was fascinated last year when Documents opened a bookstore. The way they combined perfume and books by embedding the stories in the books to bring that alive. That’s the sort of unusual partnership that China has really started to innovate with,” ​said the founder of marketing consultancy, Bibliosexual.

Before that, Dave has worked to develop brand stories for companies for companies like Coca-Cola, Mastercard, and L’Oréal in Asia during his 28-year stint with global advertising agency, McCann.

With beauty becoming more intertwined with lifestyle and wellness, Dave said it was only natural that beauty brands seek partners outside the realm of beauty.

“Crossover marketing has been done for years but what we’re starting to see more and more is really innovative crossovers, particular in that broad beauty space.”​

He believes this will ultimately lead to brands choosing to work with influencers that work across categories and reach a broader audience.

What’s a brand value?

In the episode, Dave also discusses brand values and how companies may have muddled their understanding of them in recent years.

“The discussion of brand values today has gotten confused with bigger human issues. We quite often think about the brand’s relationship with ESG. That’s important, but sometimes a brand’s values it puts across can be as simple as how it understands people,” ​said Dave.

He highlighted L’Oréal’s famous tagline, ‘because you’re worth it’,​ as among the best examples of defining a brand value.

It has become an iconic phrase associated with the brand's marketing campaigns, symbolising empowerment, self-worth, and the belief that everyone deserves to feel confident and beautiful.

“When you think of great brands in any a category, ultimately they maintain their greatness over time because they understand what people think is important,” ​said Dave.

To hear more of Dave’s insight into the future of beauty marketing, check out the podcast above.