Retrospect: Merit's Influencer Strategy from Tease to Launch
An analysis on Merit's new fragrance launch through a creator lens
Merit is one of my favorite brands, and when they teased their new launch earlier this month, I would have not guessed fragrance. On October 6th, Merit cleared their Instagram feed, teasing a new launch. Two days later, they revealed their new fragrance, Retrospect, with a launch date of October 22nd. Over the next two weeks, Merit slowly released more information about the fragrance through their community, including editors, influencers and UGC creators.
Merit is an elevated beauty brand with accessible prices. While fragrance wasn’t my first guess at their upcoming launch, it makes sense in today’s market. The product category has been on the rise recently. Between Glossier, Cult Gaia, Bottega Veneta, and Bella Hadid, who isn't launching a new fragrance in 2024?
From tease to launch day, Merit has done a beautiful job of making influencer partnerships a part of their core marketing strategy. When brands have more elevated marketing, they are sometimes afraid of partnering with influencers to tell their story in a way that’s outside of their control. But to compete with more social-forward brands like Glossier, beauty brands have to step outside of that fear.
Surprisingly, but brilliantly, Merit chose Substack for the campaign’s first partnership.
shared a dedicated sponsored substack about the new fragrance. A smart move for Merit as Sundberg has spoken on fragrance many times, even detailing her recent fragrance course at FIT. She also has 40,000+ loyal subscribers who are opening her newsletters daily. For extended reach, Merit was able to repurpose the Substack across their Instagram to highlight the partnership.
I started to dig into tagged posts around October 10th. On Instagram, Merit started to repost influencer unboxing stories, and on TikTok, a flood of gifted influencers posted, describing the notes and how the scent smells on their skin. They also partnered with beauty creator Toni Bravo, posting her reaction on their TikTok feed.
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On October 18th, Merit posted a video compilation of influencers, community, and industry friends who reviewed the fragrance in their studio. A beautiful way to create brand assets with real people who have supported the brand while still feeling similar to creator-led content.
By October 20th, two days before launch, I saw about 75 UGC + Influencer posts across TikTok and Instagram amounting to about 1.2M impressions. That’s 1.2 MILLION impressions before consumers can even purchase the product. Due to the brand prioritizing relationships with influencers, they were even able to get macro creators, like Claire Rose to post an in feed reel after being gifted the fragrance (assuming this is not a paid partnership as there isn’t a paid disclosure).
The strategy has proved sound even by the comment section, with hints of purchase intent, confirmation of ordering samples and counting down to launch day.
On October 21st, the day before launch, Merit hosted an event at the Hannah Traore Gallery in New York City where I saw Instagram Stories from creators like Joelle Hyman and Issa Sung. Paid partnerships started going live the evening before launch as well - Laurel Pantin and Emily Claire Bells.
To be honest, after the incredible kick off to partnerships with Emily Sundberg on Substack, I was expecting more on launch day, but I’ll be watching as the campaign continues to roll out ahead of their holiday campaign (which I am assuming is coming soon with so many competitors launching holiday sets this past week).
Since you can’t smell fragrance through the computer screen, keeping creators at the center of a brand’s launch strategy is key, so consumers can get a sense of the notes and how it may compare to other fragrances they love. It’s only one day after launch, and Merit already has about 2.5M impressions and counting across Substack, Instagram and TikTok.
Nobody asked, but here are a few influencers I would recommend if I were casting the campaign: past top-performing partners like Neelam Ahooja and Rachael, beauty influencers such as Eloise Dufka and Cheyenne Grenaway, fragrancetok stars like Emma, athletes like Tara Davis-Woodhall—to emphasize a favorite fragrance after a quick workout (sometimes you need a quick spritz on the go)—and lifestyle influencers like Courtney Grow, whose loyal audience trusts her shopping recommendations.
It smells so good. Can’t wait for everyone to smell it.
There's something you said in there about people's reactions to the videos made by creators and how that strategy made people want it. I think in 2025 brands should revert back to storytelling, very important and merit made an incredible move by using a substack writer to tell theirs. Heretic parfum did more or less the same thing with their Nosferatu Eau de Macabre fragrance, (There's an article on fragrantica where Little talks to a writer, Patrick Rhys.)
The consumers made blind buys of the decant fragrance online, they bought the story.