Case study 02 Beauty · Color cosmetics · Spec work
Two lip products from the most famous founder-led beauty brand there is, and no founder. Six films, four headline ads and two campaign stills by the end of the afternoon, in the brand's own first person, with no shoot. What Fotyra Studio delivers when the brand is a voice.
Kylie CosmeticsFlashes don't rush me.
1:00 pm
Kylie Cosmetics is the brand that proved a person can be a product line. It started in November 2015 as a lip kit, a liquid lipstick and a liner sold from a website that crashed on launch day, and it grew into the makeup house that Coty bought a majority of in 2019 at a valuation of about 1.2 billion dollars. The register never changed: first person, lowercase, short sentences, a shade named for a mood, and a founder in every frame.
That is exactly the test we wanted after Sana Safinaz. A fashion house is a look; this brand is a voice. Either the studio can carry that voice without the person it belongs to, or every film sounds like a beauty ad. So the brief was two product URLs, no founder, no photographer, no reference deck, and one afternoon. The work had to sound like her feed.
Fotyra always starts in the same order: the brand, then every product, then, if you want one, a face. Pointed at kyliecosmetics.com, the e-commerce engine gathered 448 data points and wrote a Brand DNA from them: two markets, six channels, a palette that is black, white, blush and mauve, the house typefaces, and a voice profile it summed up as personal, polished and playfully aspirational, casual and conversational, with a light, playful humor. It noticed the copy is short, punchy and lowercase with direct calls to action, and that founder-led storytelling makes the tone warmer. It read the mood as confident.
Inside Fotyra Studio
This is the page the studio wrote from one URL: 448 data points, from the palette and the typefaces to the voice, the audience and the positioning it summed up as accessible products designed around one person's beauty aesthetic. Press it to read the whole page.
Then the part a brand's own team rarely writes down. The audience: beauty-enthusiast women and girls, roughly 16 to 34, in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, who buy for self-expression and identity. What worries them, in order: shade uncertainty first, then formula performance, choice overload and a healthy skepticism of celebrity brands. What triggers a purchase: limited-time offers, new launches, founder affinity and social proof. And the four brands it competes with in a shopper's head: Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty and Glossier among them, scored on innovation, trust, science backing, luxury feel, accessibility and brand energy. Every film below was written against that list.
Next, each product page into a Product DNA. For the Powder Matte Lip that meant the claim that matters, liquid to powder, and the two it supports: it blurs the lip line and it plumps. The shade names, the doe-foot wand, the twelve-hour wear, the exact pink of the tube. For the Supple Kiss Lip Glaze, the gel texture, the bounce the brand calls cushiony, the shine, and a shade called Lover Girl that every film for it had to say out loud. A person could read a product page this closely. Nobody does it for both, at this speed, and then holds every claim in mind for every frame.
1:40 pm
The Powder Matte Lip went first because it carries the brand's biggest claim, and the studio proposed three films for it that could not be more different from each other: a cinematic piece, a get-ready in the first person, and a texture close-up. All three were approved. The cinematic one opens the set.
Film · Plumping Powder Matte Lip · 9:16 · 0:15
Take the frame. Make it yours.
Polite is somebody else's word for it. She carries the cinema camera through the velvet curtains herself and takes the frame rather than posing inside it, burgundy silk against a lit white cyc. Fifteen seconds that sell authorship, which is the brand's whole premise: a founder who did it herself, for a customer who would rather do it herself. It closes on the shade named for the mood, Girl's Girl.
Voice-overThey call it polite. She calls it not hers. Take the frame. Make it yours. Girl's Girl is mine.
Then the two UGC films, which are the brand's native format. Both are in the first person, both close on a save, and neither explains the product the way a brochure would: one sells the shade as a posture, the other proves the formula on a lip. That split is the studio reading the audience list, not guessing.
Film · Plumping Powder Matte Lip · 9:16 · 0:10
This shade changes my posture.
A shade worn like a mood rather than a color. A backlit vanity mirror, brown satin, and a claim that skips the formula entirely: it changes how she stands. Ten seconds of UGC cut for TikTok, in the first person the brand's feed already speaks, and closing on save this, because the Brand DNA read social proof as a trigger and a saved video is proof.
Voice-overThis shade changes my posture. My Powder Matte Lip is here. One swipe, that blur. Save this new fave.
Film · Plumping Powder Matte Lip · 9:16 · 0:10
The texture shot is the proof.
In color cosmetics the texture shot is the proof. The camera goes macro on the doe-foot wand blurring a lip line, because liquid-to-powder is a claim you have to watch rather than read, and formula performance was the audience's second-biggest worry. Ten seconds built around the single frame that converts.
Voice-overThis Powder Matte Lip's my fave. Watch the wand glide. It blurs my lip line. Save this shade for later.
Ten seconds each, cut for TikTok. Press either to watch with sound.
Films sell the mood; the feed still needs an ad with words on it. So both products went through the static ad editor: four stills, each with the wordmark, a headline and a button placed by the studio. The lines are the studio's, in the brand's own lowercase: two of them answer shade uncertainty by naming a shade, one sells the wanting before the wearing, one sells the texture. A designer would open a template for these. Nobody did.
Still · Plumping Powder Matte Lip · 9:16
A little shade, somewhere new.
A headline ad on a salt flat: glass bubbles hanging in the air, the tube standing in an inch of water, and the studio's line, a little shade, somewhere new, with meet girl's girl as the button. Written to the audience's first pain point, shade uncertainty, and answered the simplest way, by naming one. Lowercase, short, direct, the way the brand's own copy reads.
Still · Plumping Powder Matte Lip · 9:16
The lip looks decided.
Black tank, grey studio, the tube held beside a finished lip, and the line the lip looks decided over one plain sentence about the finish. The ad for the shopper the Brand DNA flagged as unsure: choose your shade is the only button it needs, and the product does the reassuring.
Still · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 9:16
Right there, almost yours.
The bottle held to the lip, not yet opened, electric blue behind her, and hold it closer pinned in the corner. A headline ad that sells the wanting before the wearing, built for the cosmetics shopper mid-scroll and the limited-time offer the brand runs so often.
Still · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 9:16
A cool gloss on warm lips.
Wand on the lip, cap in hand, the open bottle tilted into frame, and try the glaze as the button. The application shot, warm and close, for the shopper who wants to see the texture before the price.
2:30 pm
The Supple Kiss Lip Glaze is a softer product with a softer promise, and the studio gave it the only landscape work of the afternoon: a 16:9 film for the screen a launch plays on, and two campaign stills for the places a vertical will not fit. The film opens the page and opens this chapter.
Film · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 16:9 · 0:10
Flashes don't rush me.
A white gown, sheer black gloves and a pink bathroom with the party already outside the door. She takes her time with the glaze anyway, and says so. The one landscape film of the afternoon, in the brand's first person, for the screen a launch plays on: the cushiony claim spoken out loud, a macro on the finished lip, and the founder-feed sign-off, fine, I'll link it.
Voice-overFlashes don't rush me. Supple Kiss feels cushiony. Fine, I'll link it.
Then two vertical films about the same twenty minutes, the ones before you are seen. Neither is a makeover. Both are shot in the mirror, both say the shade's name, Lover Girl, as a sign-off rather than a sell, and both lower the stakes on purpose, because the brand's reading said its customer buys for herself first.
Film · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 9:16 · 0:15
Before the room sees you, choose yourself.
The twenty minutes before you are seen belong entirely to you. Plum satin at dusk, a ring light, and a city content to wait outside the window a little longer. Fifteen seconds that sell getting ready as the good part rather than the admin before it, for the glaze shade called Lover Girl.
Voice-overBefore the room sees you, choose yourself. The night can wait outside. Keep the moment yours. This is my Lover Girl.
Film · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 9:16 · 0:14
Not a makeover. A way back.
Not a transformation, a return. Flat on a backstage floor between the wardrobe rails, then a bulb-lit mirror and the smallest possible intervention. Fourteen seconds that lower the stakes on purpose: ready is closer than it currently feels, and one glaze is enough to get there.
Voice-overNot a makeover. Just a way back to yourself. And suddenly, ready feels close again. Just a little Lover Girl, babe.
Fifteen and fourteen seconds, for Reels and TikTok. Press either to watch with sound.
And the two campaign stills: one that turns those twenty minutes into a place of its own, and one with nothing in it but the finish, the picture that goes next to the price.
Still · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 16:9
A sky of her own.
Floating rock, gold cloud, a satin slip and the glaze held to the lip as if it were the only thing in the weather. The campaign picture for the Supple Kiss: the moment before you are seen, made into a place. For the website hero, the launch email and the share card, where a horizontal image has to carry the whole mood on its own.
Still · Supple Kiss Lip Glaze · 16:9
Nothing in the frame but the finish.
A face cut out of black, green eyes straight down the lens, and the glaze held beside the lip it has just finished. No set, no copy, nothing to look at except the result, which is what a product page's first image is for. The still we would put next to the price.
3:15 pm
Twelve pieces of finished creative from two product pages and no shoot, every one in the first person the brand already speaks, in a single afternoon session of a few hours. A shorter afternoon than the Sana Safinaz one, and a harder brief: the pieces had to sound like a person who was not in the room.
If this were a real engagement, the afternoon would end differently. The brand's team would approve or reject each piece in the Creative Library, create as many custom spokesmodels as the lines need so the six faces become a cast the brand owns, resize the stills for every placement, and have the lot in a shared folder by the evening. That part of the studio is already built; it is what the help centre documents, step by step.
Plumping Powder Matte Lip
A liquid-to-powder matte that blurs the lip line and plumps, in shades like Girl's Girl and Sweet Talk.
Supple Kiss Lip Glaze
A cushiony gel glaze with up to twelve hours of shine, in the shade Lover Girl.
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