A girl sits in front of the camera. Low, natural lighting provides enough brightness to show her face. One-by-one, step by step, she walks you through her daily makeup routine. A drugstore brand foundation applied with a brush, a blush to add a nice flush to her cheeks, and a swipe of lipstick. What usually takes a whole 15 to 20 minutes becomes condensed into 10. Sound familiar? This was one of the first templates of beauty-related content on YouTube, as we know it today.
YouTube and the Vloggers
Established in 2005, YouTube now boasts of more than two billion users - almost a third of the entire internet population. People spend over one billion hours watching YouTube videos daily. It’s no wonder that digital livelihoods, such as content creators, were made possible in this day and age. The terms “vlogger” and “influencer” were nonexistent two decades ago. Now, they’re part of the daily lexicon.
Of the various niches present on the platform, the beauty community is one of the largest and most active. According to Statista, beauty-related content garnered 169 billion views on the platform in 2018.
The Rise of Beauty Vloggers
The very first beauty video on YouTube was uploaded by Adrienne Nelson on 30 March 2006. Since then, the video has garnered more than 3.5 million views in thirteen years. While small in comparison to the number of views beauty content creators now generate, this was the beginning of the online beauty community.
With such a wide audience, beauty content creators have a lot of influence held within their hands. From uploading personal reviews and recommendations to building their own beauty brands, beauty vloggers have changed the way viewers behave as consumers. At first, product reviews appear to be simple cosmetics recommendations of a friend. In reality, these product reviews hold such potential to make or break a product - or even an entire company.
The Impact On The Beauty Industry
Research shows that beauty tutorials are vastly more popular than branded content made by cosmetics companies themselves. The hard-sell ad becomes annoying when it pops up before a YouTube video plays. People want to see the product in action before they decide to purchase it. This is why a review video can garner millions of views within days. Convenience, entertainment, and information are contained in one 15-minute video.
In an interview with Clozette, Yi Wei Lau, a Senior Marketing Executive of Cason Group, Beautyblender’s distributor in Malaysia, shares “Consumers today refer to [or] rely a lot on the content creators’ user experience before they proceed to make their own purchase.” For Lau, the direct one-to-one relationship between the content creator and viewer is invaluable as they act as a “medium to reach out to our potential customers directly [since] the direct communication [has a] significant influence on customers’ buying will.” Similar to a friend recommending something for you to try, the relationship between a content creator and viewer is genuine and built on the trust established through time.
Beautyblender is just one of the many beauty brands that gained popularity and following after it became a staple in beauty vloggers’ makeup video. But with raving reviews, it soon became a must-have and deemed “revolutionary” in one’s daily makeup routine.
It’s undeniable that beauty content creators have the world at their fingertips. Whether they continue to upload beauty videos while running their own beauty brands, or choose to leave YouTube behind and pursue a different path (like Michelle Phan), these successful beauty content creators will always have a big impact on the community they’ve built around their content. There’s always makeup to be reviewed, skincare to be tested, and new tools to try. Beauty vloggers are here to stay - hopefully, for the better.