Role: Social Strategy, Influencer Strategy, Creative Direction, Creative Strategy, Brand Strategy 

Ask: Amplify Maybelline’s new Colossal Bubble Mascara with a social-first campaign that would drive mass awareness, buzz, and sales.

Opportunity: Turn Colossal Bubble Mascara’s instant sell-out moment into a culturally relevant storyline—leveraging a highly engaged, Gen Z-aligned creator to generate intrigue, participation, and product demand.

Approach: With Bubble Mascara rapidly selling out everywhere after going viral on TikTok, we saw an opportunity to transform scarcity into a story. Rather than rely on traditional beauty influencers, we leaned into an unexpected but culturally resonant figure: Trevor Rainbolt, the internet’s most famous digital detective and face of the viral game GeoGuessr.

After identifying a 61% audience overlap between Rainbolt and cosmetics consumers, we partnered with him and beauty creator @HaleyyBaylee to craft a first-of-its-kind investigative influencer stunt. Haley dropped an Instagram clue in front of an Ulta store, challenging Rainbolt to track down the mystery product. A week later, he solved it—turning the launch into a suspenseful sleuth-style narrative that earned attention beyond beauty.

The content rollout was amplified by meme pages, beauty reactors, and cultural commentators who fanned the flames of curiosity and helped scale the story beyond our own channels.

Results: The content surpassed all client goals for success:

• Social-First Breakthrough:

  1. Over 8.5M views across platforms

  2. 50× more Instagram engagements and 12× more TikTok engagements vs. Maybelline's 5-year average

  3. Ranked among the Top 100 most-engaged IG videos in the U.S. on launch day (Tubular, out of 120K+ videos)

• Sales Impact:

  1. +234% Ulta sales uplift

  2. 2nd-highest week of sales to date for Bubble Mascara

• Consumer Love:

  1. 8.27% Video Engagement Rate (VER) — 5.5× higher than market average (Traackr)