Cars on the Rhode? Unpacking Hailey Bieber’s Newest Marketing Strategy
What do Formula 1 and skincare have in common? Phone cases, of course! When F1 driver Lando Norris was spotted carrying the Rhode Lip Case in a video this August, the driver (and his new accessory) went viral on both X and TikTok within the F1 community. What made this seemingly irrelevant pairing stand out, though, was Rhode’s reposting of the video on their own TikTok page. But why did this work as a marketing strategy? Moreover, is the virality that ensued both within the online F1 fan base and outside of it reason to stop underestimating the power of women and female fans in sport?
Rhode is no stranger to successful online marketing. Because the company sells exclusively from their website, they don’t have support from third party sites and companies to push their products, meaning that they have complete control over their marketing strategies. When they first released the Lip Case, it exploded online. A phone case with a built-in slot for Rhode’s Peptide Lip Treatment or Tint was a guaranteed sell for cult followers of the brand. To critics who saw the case as bulky or impractical (because the slit eliminates Apple MagSafe functionality), the Rhode girlies persisted, creating community in what they saw as a must-buy product.
Due to Hailey Bieber’s influence outside of her skincare brand, all Rhode products are guaranteed to achieve market success to some degree. Rhode also employs multiple strategies to differentiate their product launches. Like all new Rhode products, The Lip Case was promoted with an air of exclusivity and limited ability, contributing to the allure of this product and influencing skeptics to get it before it sold out. Brand strategists refer to this method as the premium product model. The second big part of The Lip Case’s success was due to Rhode's social media prowess, which we see come into play with the involvement of Lando Norris and the Formula 1 community. Through celebrity endorsements and Bieber’s own promotion, it was almost impossible to go online and not see the phone case if you followed any popular TikTok influencer.
How does Lando Norris, an unsuspecting F1 driver, add to Rhode’s persisting social media virality? Well, nobody on F1-Twitter knew for certain if that phone case was actually his when the clip first circulated. Although public attention was contained to F1-twitter, it created enough buzz to loop Rhode into the mix of trying to determine if Norris was, in fact, a fellow Rhode girlie. Rhode’s playful but tactical decision to repost the video on their TikTok, instead of letting this video fester within our small Twitter community, gave us chronically online F1 fans an inkling into their future marketing plans. They acknowledged our fangirl deliberations, playing along with our bit but also plotting for future campaigns.
In early November, Rhode launched their Fall Lip Case, the viral product now in four colors which matched the shades of their Peptide Lip Tint. The face of their campaign? None other than Alexandra St. Mleux, Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend. For those with no prior knowledge of F1, Leclerc currently drives for Ferrari, and his girlfriend, St. Mleux has made a name for herself online both as an influencer and avid art lover. To the average Rhode consumer, marketing for the Fall Lip Case appears as nothing more than simply an organized and color coordinated campaign. To the Formula 1 fangirls and the members of F1-twitter, on the other hand, this felt like a special acknowledgement of our fanbase. This small subset of the internet got to say, ‘this campaign is just for me,’ which further evolved when Leclerc was seen carrying the same gray Lip Case that Norris had a little over a week after his girlfriend’s campaign went live.
For most, thinking of F1 does not immediately call to mind Hailey Bieber or skincare. Similarly, most Rhode consumers don’t go looking to restock their facial cleanser while thinking about motorsports. Yet within the past four months, Rhode has forged a connection with a disparate fanbase, giving F1 fans a go-to skincare brand. Rhode’s decision to use F1 should compel other companies that hope to achieve social media relevance to take note. Sports fans are notoriously devoted and passionate on the internet, and the users who frequent F1-twitter and other online sports communities are especially so. As an active participant in F1-twitter, I have to say that if more brands were to start to key us into their products, or involve hockey, basketball, or soccer chronically online fans as well, they will achieve more online success. As marketing campaigns become increasingly potent across digital platforms, female sports fans of the online genre should not be ignored by companies.
