Vol. 76 Fenty Hair: Expanding the empire 💇🏾‍♀️

Category expansion is tricky. Even the most trusted brands face skepticism when they move into a new space. But of course, we’ve seen it work.

Dyson made a name in vacuums and is now equally as known (if not more) for their hair dryer. Liquid Death started out as a water brand and expanded into the ready-to-drink tea market in 2022. Even the oat milk brand Oatley started making cream cheese and an ice cream alternative. Few brands, however, have expanded as many times as Rihanna and her Fenty businesses.

This week, Case Studied explores how the Fenty Hair launch achieved billions of impressions and boosted sales for other Fenty brands.

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The Brief:

The Fenty namesake companies began in 2017, when Rihanna launched her cosmetics company Fenty Beauty. Then in 2018, she launched a lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty. Fenty the fashion brand was born in 2019 under the luxury fashion group LVMH (which has since been shuttered). The skincare brand Fenty Skin was launched in 2020 and then a fragrance line came along in 2021.

Fast forward to 2024 and the highly anticipated Fenty Hair dropped onto the scene. And it was a long time coming. It took five years to develop the brand from start to finish, according to SVP and Chief Brand Officer of Fenty Beauty Brands Erin O’Neill, marking Fenty’s longest development journey thus far.

Why so much time? Mainly because hair care is more complex than many of the other categories and Rihanna’s goal was to make the line universal—so anyone, no matter their hair texture, would be able to use it.

Once they had the product formulas down, the challenge became building a cohesive brand campaign that told the brand’s story and provided maximum exposure.

The Execution:

The Fenty Hair launch was developed in-house with PR support from SEEN Group, who specifically helped with the UK, Ireland, and Nordics launch.

The launch campaign focused on the concept of “Mane Street”, a metaphorical town that represented Fenty Hair’s brand pillars. Mane Street was the anchor to all the launch content, events, branding, and gifting. The main elements of it were Memory Lane, The Hair Heaven Salon, The Fenty Supply Store, and the science lab.

Each of those elements were literally brought to life with two main launch events: one in LA and one in London.

In LA, the brand’s two-day launch event invited influencers and press on day one and consumers on day two. The IRL immersive experience included product touchpoints like a product supply store where attendees could chat with hair experts, a cocktail infused with Fenty Hair’s proprietary complex, Replenicore-5, and a screening room that played educational videos on hair care + the brand.

There was also a dedicated space—aka Memory Lane—that showed Rihanna’s many different hairstyles over the years. On both days, there was live styling that included barbering and braiding. The brand had three influencers, Kristy Sarah, Nate White, and Cole Walliser, conduct red carpet-style interviews with Rihanna at the event.

In London, Fenty Hair took over the Corner Shop at the department store Selfridges. It was the first ever hair brand to do so for a full month. The brand said the Mane Street concept was executed in Birmingham and Manchester as well.

The London pop up brought the idea of a Mane Street to life visually, with faux storefronts, salons, even an ice cream cart. There was a launch party in London as well, which saw branded photo moments, a performance by DJ Jordss, on-site touchup hair styling services, and branded food and beverages. Celebrity hair stylist Ross Kwan and makeup artist Naima Bremer (who’s also a Fenty Beauty ambassador) did pre-event stylings for influencers.

But the IRL activations didn't stop there. There were salon events in New York and LA that mirrored the Mane Street salons from the launch events. Branded backdrops, branded posters of Rihanna, and Instagram-ready product displays took over salons. Influencers and editors were invited to 1:1 hair appointments with Fenty Hair’s celebrity stylists, who posted content across social.

All of these events served as backdrops for the brand’s interactive content, which included takeover content on owned platforms, as well as influencer content and press attention.

The Results:

While official data hasn’t been release by the brand, Fenty Hair achieved “explosive” day one sales. Fenty Hair’s organic social reached 395 million impressions during the launch month and the brand saw 4.9 billion PR impressions.

Fenty Hair said they were the number one hair hair care brand on Instagram for the first month they launched and re-clinched that title a few months later when they had retailer launches at Sephora and Selfridges UK. Fenty’s sister brands also saw “growth up to double the sales during the launch month.”

Key Takeaways:

1) Feed your high-impact channels

Fenty Beauty has 13.2 million followers on Instagram, with Fenty Skin coming in with 1.6 million. Social channels work for Fenty's brands so all the elements of the Fenty Hair launch laddered up to these channels.

When you build a campaign strategy, keep your top-performing channels in mind. Even if you don’t run campaigns directly on them, consider the ways each aspect of the campaign can feed into them.

2) Turn product development into a selling point

Fenty Hair required the longest product development journey of all Fenty’s brands, mostly because of its ambitious goals to be inclusive of all hair types. The brand stayed focused on that goal, invested time and energy, and ended up being able to sell to a much larger demographic as a result.

If a product takes a long time to develop, lean into that story. James Dyson is famous for making 5,127 prototypes before inventing the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner. Instead of viewing product development as a detractor, consider making it part of your marketing message.

3) Anchor new products in familiar values

Fenty was new to the hair care category but the brand brought its overarching values to Fenty Hair. When Fenty Beauty first came out, it became known for offering one of the widest shade ranges of foundation on the market. Fenty embedded those values of inclusivity in Fenty Hair as well.

There’s a delicate balance of differentiation and alignment when it comes to category expansion. Focus on translatable values and let your messaging focus on how they show up uniquely in each category.

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