Taylor LaMott, Director of Social Media and Influencer Relations at Too Faced, spoke at a recent Createur Roundtable.
Ever wondered what stats Too Faced looks at on creators' profiles? Or what's the biggest faux pas an influencer can make? It's all in here, baby. Read all the exclusive tips Taylor LaMott has to give, and maximize your chances to get noticed by the legendary brand.
Here's a recap of Too Faced's best tips 💄
Golden values
- The ideal Too Faced influencer is someone who genuinely loves the brand and is pleasant to work with.
- When collaborating with Too Faced, take the brief and make it your own, and adapt it to your own personality.
- When doing cold outreach, make it personal and authentic to stand out. That might not get seen, but you should still try.
- Just be yourself and be dedicated. Authenticity is so valuable.
Quick tips
- Music rights are expensive for brands! Avoid mouthing the words of a famous song, so they can easily swap the music. That’s on way to being featured by a brand.
- Reels and TikTok are the number one content for Too Faced lately.
- If you’re not comfortable talking to the camera, train to do that. Step out of your comfort zone.
- Too Faced works with non-English speaking creators.
- The biggest faux-pas an influencer can make is spelling the name of the people at the brand wrong.
- If you receive gifts, post about them to stay on the list.
- To move on to paid collaborations, look at the brand’s page. What are paid collabs they have done? What colors are used? What’s the style? Then create that kind of content and reach out to the brand with it.
WORKING WITH TOO FACED: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
What are your criteria when choosing influencers to work with?
We work with influencers in many different ways. The traditional pay-for-play/social posting, of course. But we also work with influencers to create some of our advertising content, and you might not need to post it on your page.
I would say overall, when we are working with influencers, we are looking for someone who is authentically themselves. We believe in authentic relationships. You don't wanna work with someone that might not like our product. Maybe you love our mascara, but you don't like our Lip Injection. Then we can work with you on the mascara to make sure it's authentic and looks good for content.
We're looking for you to make an impact, to take the brief we gave you and make it your own, make it interesting. We're looking for people to take it to the next level.
Obviously, we’re looking for people that are easy to work with. If I need something turned around quickly, I'm going to think “I worked with this one influencer. She was so professional, she followed the brief, and she does great content. Let's reach out to her.”
So I would say, 1) great content, 2) be yourself 3) be pleasant to work with. That sticks in the mind of the influencer team.
A big thing to get noticed is making pieces of content fully dedicated to a brand.
What's your advice to small and mid-size creators to stand out and get your attention?
A big thing to get noticed is making pieces of content fully dedicated to a brand. If you do a reel, dedicate it fully to one brand. Because if you do a full look and you're using Mac, Too Faced and Fenty, I can't regram it on our page. That might be a great look but you're showing all of these other brands, and I work for one brand. I can only regram content that only shows that.
If your goal is to get Too Faced’s attention, maybe put on cute a pink top, or have a cute pink background. That's very on-brand for something that we would regram or notice. Remember to stay true to your own image, though.
Of course, tag us, and use the appropriate hashtags that we have for our different collections. And a huge thing that a lot of creators don't realize is, that as a brand we don't have rights for most songs. We have to use boring songs in the commercial library, or we have to purchase rights to the music.
If you do an amazing video, but use a Justin Bieber song and lip sync to it, I can't contact you and regram it because I can’t even change the music. If you mouth the words to something, and that I have to swap the music, it's not going work, I'm not going to be able to post it. If you go ahead and use a song I have the right to, that's so helpful and so big. These are the biggest way to get featured on a brand's page.
What metrics do you look at?
When we’re looking for creators, we have an idea of the mix we want between bigger creators and smaller ones. In any case, your audience has to love you, engage with your content, and listen to what you have to say. We want you to be able to pitch a product to your community and get reactions. So we look for that engagement.
Are there any specifics you look for when requesting a media kit from a creator?
In terms of the content of the media kit itself, not necessarily. But do make it personalized. Just like you would make your resume specific to a job that you’re applying to. Make your media kit a little more specific to the brand that you're pitching.
Are you interested in working with non-English speaking creators?
I love this question. Yes, a hundred percent. Too Faced is a global brand. We're literally everywhere. We have Instagram accounts and Influencer Teams across the world: France, Korea, Australia, Dubai, Brazil, Mexico, etc. So we do work with a lot of creators that are non-English speaking. We try to work with them specifically in our different regions.
Show us how can bring Too Faced into your type of content.
What type of content do you find the most value from?
All types of content are valuable in their own right. Photos are still great. But Reels and TikTok are number one. Make them dedicated and look on-brand. Be authentic and true to yourself. We've all seen 5.000 tutorials or transitions that are great. But we’ve seen this so many times, so make it personable and authentic.
Show us how can bring Too Faced into your type of content. It might not be a traditional tutorial. It might be someone in their bathroom organizing all their Too Faced makeup, in a very aesthetically and satisfying way.
Can you tell us more about product collaborations and gifting: what do you look for in a creator?
We partner with influencers monthly for new launches. We look for creators who match the product. For instance, if we’re doing a campaign around Better Than Sex, but you wear false eyelashes and you're known to wear false eyelashes all the time, I might not think to go to you for this one. It's product-specific or launch-specific. Does your vibe match what we're doing? Does the product match what you’re doing?
Right now we’re focused on Reels and TikTok content, and the general rights around that type of content. Typically we'll do like syndication, so it's the same content on both accounts. We’re looking for people who can do that. A lot of times that includes speaking to the camera.
Back in the day, taking a pretty photo holding the product did the job. Today, with Reels and TikTok, it's a bigger production. If you're not comfortable speaking to the camera, practice and work on that skill.
For ads, you’re following doesn't matter. If you make great content and you look amazing with our product, that’s perfect. For gifting, that's a huge range. We'll do gifts for people that we've never worked with before. If they try the products and we get content feedback, they go to our PR list. It's a much bigger list than what we do for activations monthly.
What's the best way to get in contact with Too Faced? Do you see DMs? Is that a place where your team is looking for additional inbound?
If you're tagging us and things like that, we'll probably notice you on social. But since our page is so big, DMs tend to get lost. There is such an influx. We have an alias, an influencer relations email (influencerrelations@toofaced.com).
BEST PRACTICES WHEN WORKING WITH BRANDS
Any successful pitch or campaign ideas that stood out to you in the past?
I would say a good cold pitch. We get so many all the time, so make it specific to the brand. Because if not, it almost feels like a spam email, I might move on and not look at it. Try to make it personable to stand out. It might not do anything, but it might. I've seen some good cold pitches and forwarded them to my team.
What is the biggest faux pas an influencer can make when reaching out to a brand?
Spelling our name wrong. Happens all the time, people spell it “Two Faced”. Right off the bat, I'm like “girl, no.” We see that a lot.
Any advice for creators who get a lot of gifted campaigns, but are looking to transition into paid campaigns?
Like I said earlier, make dedicated, on-brand content with what you're gifted. Try to look at the brand and figure out a look that fits them the most. Then post, tag them, and use the hashtags. And if you have a contact at the brand, tell them how you loved the gift. Show them the content and tell them you would love to do something with them. It doesn't hurt to try to push that relationship further, without being too pushy.
Is it a turn-off when a brand presents a gifting opportunity and a creator replies with a rate card, or asks for a paid opportunity?
If I'm talking to an agent or an influencer and we have no relationship, typically, we would love to gift at first to make sure they like the product. Let the brand ease into it.
And then after that, if the influencer posted about the product, loved it, and would love to do something with us, that's a great transition. If it’s your first contact with a brand and they just want to gift for fun, maybe don't come off right away talking about money. But if someone is asking you to post in exchange for a gift and you don't feel comfortable doing that, it’s totally alright.
OUTTAKES ON THE CREATOR SPACE
In the past, there was a lot of value placed on very polished, produced content, and now things are shifting towards more raw, real UGC. How have you navigated that as a brand?
We used to get so crazy about our grid, but it's not like that anymore. Of course, there are still moments for this like polished-looking content. We're trying to sell makeup at the end of the day. But it goes back to bringing in that authenticity and your personality into the content and making it feel real. The raw content served to bring in your authenticity and your personality. TikTok is where we're much rawer. We've brought that into Instagram a bit.
What are you envisioning for the creator space in the next, say six months to two years?
I would say something that's new and that we've actually started working with is live shopping. We were one of the first brands to do TikTok live shopping. We started in December and we go live three times a week.
Elyse, our Executive Director of Global Beauty is all over our pages. She's amazing and talented. We also work with a micro creator, Carrie Ingram. She doesn't have a huge following, but she's very knowledgeable about the brand, and very on brand. She worked at Sephora before and was a licensed makeup artist. We've been working with her for five months. She's been doing two lives every single week for the brand. Thanks to that, she's getting more opportunities with us because she's easy to work with.
That might not be everyone's cup of tea. But if that's something that you're interested in or you are very knowledgeable in makeup, that's something brands are catching onto. In China, live shopping is a multi billion-dollar business. The North American audience is not there yet, but it's already starting and it's something that we'll be seeing evolving in the next few years. So maybe train your going-live abilities, polish your public speaking skills, learn how to pitch products, etc.
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