Festive season is one of the biggest moments on the beauty calendar. But with brands flooding social feeds with Diwali greetings, festive looks, celebrity campaigns and product-led communication, simply showing up around a cultural occasion is no longer enough to stand out.
For beauty brands, the challenge is increasingly about finding a way into the consumer’s life rather than simply attaching a product to a festival.
Last year, Hilary Rhoda took a more traditional, occasion-led route, building a production-heavy campaign around different festivals. This year, the brand is moving towards a social-first, micro-drama format designed around relatability and emotional connection.
Speaking to Brand Beats, Vatsal Agrawal, Co-founder & CMO, Hilary Rhoda, discusses the thinking behind the shift, how the brand is tracking changing beauty preferences, why creator content cannot replace larger brand-building campaigns, and how quick commerce could further disrupt beauty loyalty.
Hilary Rhoda’s Bet On Micro-Drama
Hilary Rhoda is entering the festive season with a significantly larger advertising investment.
“Our budgets have gone up by around 35–40% over the last year across the board. The festive budget has also gone up by around 35–40%, and the overall media mix remains similar to what we did last year,” he says. The brand continues to distribute its marketing efforts across social media, influencer marketing and campaigns, rather than making a major shift in channel allocation.
The bigger change, however, is not where the money is going, but what the brand wants that money to create.
“If I compare this festive season with last year, our strategy has taken a complete 180-degree turn,” he says.
“Driving emotion is very important because emotional content is something people can remember and relate to. If you simply show the product or talk about its attributes, even if it is the best product out there, it may not sell.”
The new festive campaign will be social-first and built around a micro-drama format, reflecting the way audiences increasingly consume entertainment through Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
Agrawal says the objective is to make the brand feel native to the content environment rather than create what he describes as a conventional polished piece of branded content.
“This year, we are doing a social-first campaign where we are creating something like a micro-drama series, which is the kind of content people naturally consume these days through YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels,” he says.
The brand will also work with influencers to amplify the campaign.
While Agrawal does not disclose the campaign storyline ahead of its release, he makes the distinction between this approach and traditional product-centric festive advertising clear.
“It is not going to be a very polished piece of branded content where we simply show the product,” he says.
Instead, the ambition is to create a story where consumers can recognise themselves. “It is a micro-drama where people will be able to see themselves within the story. It is something that is very relevant and relatable.”
Staying Relevant Means Knowing When A Trend Will Peak
The shift in festive storytelling comes alongside a broader challenge for Hilary Rhoda: staying culturally and commercially relevant as beauty preferences change rapidly.
Agrawal points to the evolution of colour preferences as one example “About five years ago, reds, maroons and similar shades were very popular, especially in lipsticks and nail paints. Today, nude shades, coffee shades and browns are much more popular,” he says.
For an established beauty brand, therefore, relevance cannot simply come from maintaining a recognisable identity.
“Staying with the trends, keeping up with what consumers want and launching new shades and products at the right time is very important for staying relevant,” Agrawal says. The timing matters as much as the product itself.
“Usually, we receive consumer feedback through different channels—the customer service team, sales team or online reviews. But when there are multiple layers, something can get lost,” he explains.
To reduce that distance, Hilary Rhoda has created focus groups and communities where teams can interact directly with consumers.
The Brand Can Evolve, But Some Things Stay Fixed
For Agrawal, the brand itself has to evolve with its audience. “If I continue communicating in a way that the younger generation cannot relate to, then I need to change. I need to change myself and I need to change the brand,” he says.
At the same time, that evolution does not mean abandoning everything that the brand has historically stood for.
“There are two or three core pillars that we cannot compromise on. Quality and transparency are some of the pillars that have been there for the past 15 years and will continue to be there for the next 15 years,” Agrawal says.
“What we build on top of those pillars needs to change from time to time to stay relevant.” That philosophy also defines what the brand wants consumers to associate with Hilary Rhoda.
While the brand continues to respond to changing trends, Agrawal says its desired positioning rests on two consistent associations: safety and performance.
“What we now want to tell customers is that we are a brand that offers very safe and very trendy products,” he says. The brand may not always compete through fancy packaging, but Agrawal believes the product experience itself should create trust.
For him, that promise needs to work irrespective of where the consumer purchases the product.
Why Creator Marketing Cannot Replace Brand Campaigns
The same distinction between short-term relevance and long-term brand building extends to creator marketing.
Beauty discovery today is heavily influenced by GRWMs, tutorials, reviews and short-form content. But Agrawal does not see creator-led content and larger campaigns as competing formats.
“Creator-led marketing helps you get reach, but it does not build the brand in the same way that larger campaigns can,” he says. Creator content, according to him, is often better suited to communicating specific product benefits whether that means shades, colours or ingredients.
“Creator content often focuses on product benefit explaining the shades, colours or specific ingredients, such as vitamin C, that a product may have compared with its competitors.”
Larger campaigns serve a different purpose. “Larger campaigns, production-heavy content and big celebrity or influencer faces can help establish the overall brand image, which is very important.”
For Hilary Rhoda, therefore, the answer is not to choose between creators and conventional brand campaigns. “Both are important. One has not taken a back seat.”
The Next Beauty Marketing Battle Could Be Speed
Looking beyond the festive season, Agrawal sees another structural change coming from quick commerce.
He expects the category to see even faster access to beauty products as platforms expand their quick-commerce capabilities. “I think quick commerce is going to get even bigger. With larger platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart also riding the quick-commerce wave, consumers will be able to access products very quickly.”
That could change not just how consumers purchase beauty products, but also how they think about loyalty.
“Purchasing will become easier and faster. Because of this, I think brand loyalty will be challenged because speed and availability will become priorities for consumers.”
For beauty brands, that could make retention harder as consumers become increasingly comfortable choosing what is immediately available. “It will become more difficult to retain customers, and I think that challenge will increase further.”
For Hilary Rhoda, then, the festive season is only one part of a larger marketing shift: from being present around cultural moments to being relevant within them, from selling product benefits to building emotional connections, and from simply tracking trends to anticipating where the consumer is headed next.
