Clean indie brand Youth To The People has expanded its marketing channels with its first-ever out-of-home advertising campaign.
The campaign, which kicked off Aug. 9, features 30 billboards and wild-postings across five cities: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. The campaign spotlights the brand’s hero product, Superfood Cleanser, and uses phrases found on its product packaging, such as “Less ego, more antioxidants” and “You are youth, live your truth.” Joe Cloyes, Youth To The People CEO and co-founder, declined to share the brand’s current or expected revenue, but said it “doubled” its sales in the last 12 months. Wholesale makes up more than 50% of the brand’s sales. Youth To The People is sold at Sephora, Cult Beauty, Free People, Anthropologie and Nordstrom, among other retailers.
“We wanted to try to learn from this to see how we can continue to grow our brand awareness, and also hopefully excite our community by showing where we’re going,” said Cloyes.
The OOH ads also arrive as Youth To The People ramps up its product launches, with undisclosed new products arriving in September, October and holiday collections. Typically, Youth To The People launches four products a year, with its last being the Superclay Purify + Clear Power Mask in March. As part of Sephora’s clean program, Youth To The People recently gained the retailer’s new Clean + Planet Positive designation. Youth To The People last raised an undisclosed funding round in 2019, led by Sandbridge Capital and Hourglass founder and CEO Carisa Janes.
According to a Feb. 2021 survey from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, drivers are paying more attention to OOH ads compared to Sept. 2020, given that people have returned to physical offices and are commuting more frequently. Gen Z and Millennials notice OOH ads “much more” compared to Sept 2020 –– the survey showed a 5% increase. Twenty-five percent of the general public also reported learning about new brands or businesses through OOH ads. Since the end of Covid-19 lockdowns in the U.S., brands have slowly but surely embraced OOH advertising. They’ve included Glossier, in Oct. 2020, and Sol de Janeiro, in June.
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“[OOH ads] connect with people differently when they’re on their way to work or traveling and going somewhere,” said Greg Gonzalez, Youth To The People co-founder. “You’re [in your head], but can stop and be captured by something in a different way. There is so much happening digitally — it’s content mania — so we wanted to bring [aspects of the brand] to a larger scale, [so] that people would experience them in a different way.”
The brand’s growth plans include hiring and market expansion. In July, Youth To The People announced the hiring of a new svp of marketing and an svp of operations and product development. The brand now has 67 employees and is sold in 22 international markets, largely through Sephora and Cult Beauty. It will focus on expanding in Asia through South Korea, Singapore and China, said Cloyes, but plans for distribution are not set. A holiday pop-up in Los Angeles, at its LA showroom, is in the works. It will serve as a testing ground for future multi-city pop-ups.
