This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free dailyMarketing Dive newsletter.
L’Oréal was early to the branded microdrama boom in the U.S., running a holiday effort for Maybelline last year that riffed on Hallmark romance movie tropes. The beauty and cosmetics giant around Halloween again dipped its toe into the short-form video genre that has ballooned in popularity as marketers produce entertainment they hope can attract scroll-oriented viewers but requires a different touch than a glossy ad campaign.
The company’s Urban Decay brand on Oct. 24 debuted a vertical video series on ReelShort titled “Ghost Hunter Hotline,” which runs six episodes that generally last just a few minutes each. The story follows protagonist Zoe as she dishes out justice to romantic interests who suddenly went silent on the communications front, or “ghosted” her and her friends, while showing off Urban Decay’s aptly named Ghosting Spray product. A former fling eventually returns and throws a wrench in some of Zoe’s plans, the type of soapy twist typical to cliffhanger-heavy microdramas. The overarching idea was to blend elements typical to the spooky season with tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern dating culture.
“Ghost Hunter Hotline” generated 3.8 million views in the five-day window after launch while sitting at No. 2 on ReelShort’s most-viewed shorts ranking, according to data shared by the brand. L’Oréal’s microdrama experiments are part of a larger effort to think differently from an old-school advertising mindset that puts the chief focus on product messaging and brand story.
“It’s something that we’ve now known in the creator era for the last couple of years, which is that you really need to think about your audience first, and you think about entertainment first as the primary purpose [of marketing],” said Han Wen, chief digital and marketing officer at L’Oréal USA.
Staying on trend
Rather than create the microdrama content with an external agency, as it had done in the past, L’Oréal produced, developed and distributed “Ghost Hunter Hotline” in collaboration with ReelShort, relying on its knowledge of what appeals to the genre’s audience. ReelShort, which is owned by Crazy Maple Studio, is one of the leading dedicated microdrama platforms, on track to generate over $1 billion in revenue this year, according to third-party industry analyses.
“We went into it knowing that we wanted to test directly with a platform rather than a more hybrid format,” said Wen.
