Celebrity Beauty Brands: Holiday Marketing Lessons for 2025
Inside the Strategies Powering Makeup Marketing Success for Star-Led Brands
Discover the latest rankings across the fashion, lifestyle and beauty industry
The Ranking Behind Makeup Marketing
The star-led segment in beauty—those brands founded by celebrities, influencers or makeup artists—is powered primarily by makeup, which generates 93% of the segment’s total Media Impact Value (MIV®) as analyzed in Launchmetrics’ latest Beauty Growth Playbook.
| Rank | Brand | MIV® | Placements | Avg. MIV® |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | MAKEUP BY MARIO | $116M | 11.7K | $9.91K |
| 2. | Haus Labs | $67.9M | 6.92K | $9.82K |
| 3. | ONE/SIZE | $64.1M | 7.09K | $9.05K |
| 4. | Patrick Ta Beauty | $61.2M | 6.13K | $9.97K |
| 5. | Pat McGrath | $53.7M | 6.54K | $8.21K |
ANALYSIS
Ranking Insights: Best Makeup Marketing Strategies
This makes makeup the most competitive category within the star-led beauty landscape, where differentiation and a strong marketing proposition are essential to lead. For brands in this space, measuring performance and benchmarking specifically within the makeup category provides a clear advantage: it helps identify the strategies driving growth, guides smarter budget allocation, and ensures the brand’s impact extends beyond the founder’s personal influence.
To understand what’s fueling success, we analyzed leading star-led beauty brands in the makeup category during Q3 2025, uncovering the tactics behind their results and where brands should focus their efforts to close the year with maximum impact.
- Activate the right influencers by market and channel. Partnering with the most impactful makeup creators in each market—and understanding where they perform best—is key to maximizing ROI. Shima Katouzian stands out as one of the top-performing influencer by MIV for Haus Labs ($5.12M), Patrick Ta Beauty ($3.87M), ONE/SIZE ($3.78M) and MAKEUP BY MARIO ($2.94M). Her strongest performance is on Instagram, where she delivers the highest potential reach and average MIV. This highlights the importance of tailoring influencer activations not only by who you partner with but also where they perform best to drive the strongest returns.
- Maximize Owned Media to amplify campaign storytelling. MAKEUP BY MARIO is 4x more efficient in generating Owned Media-driven MIV than the average across the competitors analyzed. Performance peaked in September fueled by the launch of the Ethereal Eyes™ Eyeshadow Palette, where founder-led storytelling played a pivotal role. By using Owned Media to share the inspiration and artistry behind the product, the brand deepened emotional connection and strengthened campaign impact, showing how Owned Media can turn product launches into meaningful brand moments.
- Leverage All-Star Influencers to scale awareness. For Haus Labs, Patrick Ta Beauty, ONE/SIZE and Pat McGrath, the All-Star Influencer tier is the top MIV driver, offering reach and visibility in one of beauty’s most competitive categories. Collaborating with this tier enables brands to scale awareness globally and maintain strong visibility amid category saturation.
The makeup category remains a key performance driver for star-led beauty brands, but long-term success depends on selecting the right strategies and activating them through measurable, data-led execution. By leveraging performance metrics such as MIV, brands can benchmark impact by category, refine their influencer mix and design campaigns that strengthen brand equity. With Launchmetrics, beauty brands can pinpoint the Voices and moments that truly drive brand performance, empowering them to optimize strategy and sustain impact throughout the year.