Sephora and TBWA\Chiat\Day LA Partner to Champion Diversity and Inclusion in the Beauty Category

TBWA\Chiat\Day LA today announced that it has been appointed as a creative agency partner for beauty retailer Sephora, supporting creative ideation and execution for the brand’s North American 2023 holiday campaign. Backed by the agency’s Multicultural Practice, the new partnership aims to highlight the brand’s holiday experience through the lens of its commitment to creating the most diverse and inclusive beauty community.

Together, Sephora and Chiat\Day LA will develop work that identifies then breaks market conventions, all in an effort to build a better category and shift culture. Their focus together will be Sephora’s holiday 2023 campaign, and their goal is to produce a creative concept that will expand on consumers’ unique beauty needs and tap into diverse partnerships, both in front of and behind the camera.

“Sephora is a brand that speaks to our team’s passions and our values,” said Erin Riley, CEO at Chiat\Day LA. “Sephora is a clear leader in the inclusive beauty revolution, and we are privileged to have the opportunity to amplify their impact through truly disruptive communications that put nuanced multicultural insights at the brand’s core.”

A driving force in the new business acquisition, Chiat\Day LA’s Multicultural Practice team was created in response to the continued and eminent shifts in the U.S. demographic makeup and a desire to speak directly to consumers who, despite influence and buying power, have historically been overlooked in the advertising industry. The role of the practice’s lead specialists is to identify cultural opportunities and unearth deep, human insights that reflect the ‘general’ market being more diverse and multicultural than ever before.

“Brands that lead with multicultural insights can open the door to reflect human truths and celebrate uniqueness in more ways than one,” said Krystal Hawkins Hooks, associate strategy director and Multicultural Practice lead at Chiat\Day LA. “It’s refreshing to work with Sephora, knowing we will develop an inclusive approach to creative work, portray unique forms of beauty and speak to diverse groups authentically.”

The new partnership comes at a time when the beauty category is at peak complexity and the role of retail is in need of evolution. Sephora’s internal research study shows 84% of U.S. beauty consumers see beauty as a celebration of differences. As an audience well aware of the changes needed in the category, these consumers are rejecting conventional forms of beauty and, instead, are defining the extraordinary in themselves and others - looking for real, unique forms of beauty to be revered in the new way of the world.

This union of agency and brand marks a joint commitment to doing the brave thing by challenging the business category - Chiat\Day LA joins Sephora in believing that inclusion is the catalyst for driving better decisions, shaping strategy, inspiring work and guiding who produces the work. Together, the partners aim to shift beauty culture into an inclusive, welcoming space.

For more about Sephora, please visit here.