Ever wondered whether your favourite brand is popular with anyone else?
The ‘Cosmetify Index’ is an initiative started by London based online beauty store Cosmetify in 2019 that ranks 200 of the hottest global beauty brands.
The main list ranks the most popular beauty brands, but also includes four other categories of ‘rising star brands’, ‘most popular brands by country’, ‘biggest beauty influencers’ and ‘sustainable beauty brands’.
Cosmetify begins their ranking for the main list by identifying the top 200 brands with the most Instagram followers, which are then scored on five factors out of 100 before reaching a final average score for each brand.
The five factors are Instagram followers, Instagram engagement rate, number of Instagram hashtags, global search volume, and percentage change in global searchers.
The world has changed a lot since the last report in May this year, which came at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Lets see how things have changed in the last quarter to see which brands are on top.
Top ten overall brands
The top three spots this quarter (were no surprise) with the massive empires of Huda Beauty, Anastasia Beverly Hills and M.A.C Cosmetics sustaining leading Instagram followings and each launching popular new lines.
The relatively new Huda Beauty (est. 2013) and Anastasia Beverly Hills (est. 1997) were build up from the ground by visionary founders, and M.A.C is an Estee Lauder pioneer as it was established in 1984.
The Body Shop moved up all the way from the number 26th spot in the last survey, claiming the most searched brand on Google with over 8.1 million searches.
Other notable new brands include actress Millie Bobbie Brown’s creation Florence by Mills which burst instantly into popularity this year.
- Huda Beauty
- Anastasia Beverly Hills
- M.A.C cosmetics
- The Body Shop
- Florence by Mills
- L’oreal Paris
- Yves Rocher
- Colourpop Cosmetics
- PÜR
- Morphe
Most popular beauty brands by country
The Cosmetify Index finds the most popular beauty brands in each country, then determines the most globally popular by adding them up. This is calculated by finding the brand with the highest number of average monthly searches on Google.
While in previous years Yves Rocher has taken top spot, this quarter The Body Shop tied first, each being the most popular beauty brand in 31 different countries.
- Yves Rocher (tied first) – 31
- The Body Shop (tied first) – 31
- Dove – 15
- Colourpop Cosmetics – 14
- Rituals – 11
- Clinique – 9
- Estee Lauder – 8
- Benefit – 7
- Huda – 6
The Cosmetify Index has 4 other categories.
The survey also reveals rising star brands, top influencers, and sustainable beauty brands to fully represent the beauty industry and those talented individuals leading the charge.
Notable sustainable beauty brands
Sustainable beauty brands are becoming increasingly popular, particularly as the beauty industry typically has a large carbon footprint.
Rising stars of beauty
Rising stars are those brands that have has the biggest increase in interest over the quarter – a particularly impressive feat given the economic downturn that made many industries struggle during COVID-19.
These three brands had huge percentage increase in google searches as compared to the last report. PÜR took top spot with more than 3x the amount of searches, an increase of 337.9% which was largely due to a much-anticipated collaboration with blogger RawBeautyKristi that sold out just hours after launching in July.
- PÜR
- Kitsch
- Merci Handy
Top Influencers
The Cosmetify Index measured the follower counts of the world’s most influential beauty gurus on YouTube and Instagram and their potential earnings from sponsored posts to find out who really runs the beauty industry on social media.
Biggest Instagram following
- Huda Beauty (47.9m Instagram followers)
- Kylie Cosmetics (24.8m Instagram followers)
- M.A.C Cosmetics (23.4m Instagram followers)
Most powerful beauty influencers
- Huda Kattan
- James Charles
- Bretman Rock
For the full report, click here.
