The Fenty Effect: Engaging with All: An ethnographic study exploring the experiences of Dutch students with Fenty Beauty’s platform practices on TikTok and Instagram.

In 2017, world-famous superstar Rihanna launched her own cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty to the world. What separates the Fenty Beauty brand from other make up brands is the awareness of the lack of diversity in the beauty industry. The brand launched with a line of 40 shades of foundation for people whose skin tones range from the lightest to the deepest tones. All over social media, the brand was praised for not only their racial diversity in the advertising but also for being a voice for people of skin tones that other cosmetics brands fail to recognize and cater to. Furthermore, Fenty Beauty is known to have an innovative digital marketing strategy with which they represent people from all over the world, of all different sizes, with different genders and sexualities. This research aims to explore how Fenty Beauty adapts its marketing strategies to online platforms to engage with its audiences and how this possibly influences the way consumers decide to purchase a product. Particularly interesting was to discover how the individuals receive and interpret the company-owned social media accounts which make the research relevant to better understand the relationship between a brand and a consumer. The research question was formulated as follows: How are the platform practices of Fenty Beauty on Instagram and TikTok experienced by Dutch students between the age of 21 and 25? The method used for this research was qualitative in-depth interviews with five young students in the Netherlands, along with participant and field observation. After collecting the data, a thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the data and identify themes and patterns that would contribute to answering the research question. Though the brand had a head start with Rihanna as the face of the brand, the brand still had a lot to prove to the world as they launched with their slogan “Beauty for All”. The findings indicate that the participants appreciated all efforts made by Fenty Beauty to engage with its followers. A thorough analysis of the brand’s digital marketing strategy shows that it makes effective use of all recently added features and affordance of the platforms. The results show that the participants feel heard and represented by the brand through its highly inclusive and representative content, its efforts to interest and attract the Millennial target audience through the use of youthful language, viral trends, and relevant influencers and celebrities.