Ashleigh Baker
In May, we launched our summer campaign, Club Cult, as an opportunity to rethink how we connect with our community, moving beyond traditional audience segments to celebrate the different ways people experience beauty.
The Club Cult campaign was born out of our customer data and the way our community actually shops, discovers and engages with beauty. Earlier this year, we wanted to move away from talking to our customer as one broad audience and instead recognise that beauty means something different to everyone. Reflecting this approach, we created four campaign personas: The Early Mover, Slow Girl Summer, The Social Spark, and The Golden Hour Muse.
Creating Personas That Reflect Real Behaviours
Rather than building traditional demographic profiles, we looked at behaviours, attitudes and the cultural moments shaping the way people engage with beauty today. That gave us a much richer, more human framework to work with. Instead of speaking in broad strokes, we can now curate edits and tell stories that feel genuinely relevant to different mindsets and moments.
One of the things I love most about the personas is that they're intentionally fluid. They're not labels or boxes to fit into. You might be the Social Spark on a Saturday night, then fully embrace your Slow Summer Girl come Sunday. That flexibility was really important because that's how people experience beauty. It shifts with their mood, routine and lifestyle.
Club Cult felt like the perfect time to speak to them through a summer lens. It's one of the biggest beauty discovery seasons, where people are refreshing routines, experimenting with new categories and shopping across everything from SPF to fragrance and colour. It allowed us to bring the personas to life through curated edits that felt playful, relatable and distinctly Cult.
The Value of Listening to Your Community
Digital will always be at the heart of Cult Beauty, but there's something powerful in creating moments where our community can experience our brand in real life.
The Smoov activation allowed us to take Club Cult into the real world and make the campaign tangible. Whether it was choosing the persona that felt most like them, trying one of the bespoke smoothies, discovering curated product samples or simply spending time in a space, people became actively engaged rather than just observers.
It was also designed to encourage discovery and conversation. The activation featured exclusive Club Cult branding throughout the space and a creator preview helped generate excitement before the doors even opened. Working with Smoov also introduced us to an entirely new community through their membership app and audience, increasing the reach of the campaign beyond our existing customers.
The Value of Listening to Your Community
Digital will always be at the heart of Cult Beauty, but there's something powerful in creating moments where our community can experience our brand in real life.
The Smoov activation allowed us to take Club Cult into the real world and make the campaign tangible. Whether it was choosing the persona that felt most like them, trying one of the bespoke smoothies, discovering curated product samples or simply spending time in a space, people became actively engaged rather than just observers.
It was also designed to encourage discovery and conversation. The activation featured exclusive Club Cult branding throughout the space and a creator preview helped generate excitement before the doors even opened. Working with Smoov also introduced us to an entirely new community through their membership app and audience, increasing the reach of the campaign beyond our existing customers.
For me, one of the biggest benefits of an activation like this is the opportunity to meet our community face to face. We spend so much time looking at engagement metrics and social comments, but nothing compares to hearing people's reactions in the moment. Those conversations are often where you get your most valuable insights, and they're what help shape the next idea.