Rebuilding Brand Resonance in Beauty:

Overview

A top beauty brand with years of cultural cachet had been relying on expensive brand trackers that always told the same story. But behind the scenes, the brand was losing ground—customers were drifting, competitors were surging, and internal teams lacked clear direction. They needed more than static metrics. They needed clarity.

Challenge

Despite steady scores on traditional brand health metrics, business performance told a different story.

Market share was eroding, influencer-led competitors were rising fast, and legacy data couldn’t explain why. The brand’s internal narrative—built on outdated assumptions—no longer aligned with external reality.

Leadership needed sharper tools to cut through the noise.

Solutions & Insights

Starlight replaced the outdated tracker with a multi-source view of brand health. We analyzed social conversation, search volume, web traffic to expose shifts in sentiment and attention. We married that data with traditional survey metrics and marketing activity/spend into a unique brand equity score.

We uncovered a 35% drop in branded search among core demographics, and competitor mentions up 50%. Campaign audits revealed 30% of media spend was underperforming, while our custom brand equity score exposed a 40% drop in resonance with key segments.

Armed with these insights, the brand reallocated spend to high-impact influencer channels, boosting marketing ROI by 25%. Optimized content and SEO drove a ~25% increase in branded search share. Most importantly, brand equity scores rebounded by 12% in just six months—signaling a renewed connection with their most valuable customers.

“Starlight helped us see beyond the stale survey tracker data and into what really mattered. Their composite brand equity score was a wake-up call—and a roadmap.”
— VP of Marketing, Leading Beauty Brand