Amazon bets on K-Beauty, Ulta Beauty embraces Squishmallows, and 3 Glossy Pop Award winners share their campaign success secrets

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Oct 2, 2025

Guest

Nilofer Vahora

Leslie Ann Hall, Founder and CEO of Iced Media, shares her insights on the successful TikTok strategy behind MoroccanOil’s fragrance launch, emphasizing social commerce dynamics. Dana Paolucci, Dove's Head of PR, discusses the impactful community-driven approach of the Dove x Crumbl Cookies campaign, which generated substantial user-generated content. Lastly, Nilofer Vahora, CMO at Amika, reveals how their Superfruit Star launch blended cultural storytelling and professional credibility, driving impressive engagement and awareness.

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INSIGHT

Viral Toy Enters Fragrance

Squishmallows launched a fine fragrance line sold at Ulta targeting 14–24-year-olds with nostalgic atomizer packaging.
The move shows viral toy brands can successfully extend into beauty and capitalize on Gen Z collectibility.

INSIGHT

Coty Prioritizes Fragrance

Coty is doubling down on fragrance and may sell legacy makeup brands to focus on higher-performing fragrance lines.
Fragrance is performing while mass makeup lags, signaling strategic portfolio shifts among conglomerates.

INSIGHT

Goop's Mass Experiment Falters

Goop's mass diffusion Good Clean Goop underperformed and has mostly shuttered, while Goop Beauty moved into Ulta with higher price points.
A celebrity diffusion line can fail even amid category growth if it doesn't clearly differentiate or gain traction.

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What does it take for a beauty campaign or brand to cut through the noise in 2025?

Our second-annual Glossy Pop Awards is one place where our team recognizes the best and most culturally relevant beauty and fashion campaigns, people, products, and brands.

In today’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, we welcome three esteemed beauty executives to discuss the secret sauce behind their Glossy Pop Award-winning campaigns.

These winning campaigns drove audience engagement, generated buzz and successfully met their set business goals.

To start, host Lexy Lebsack welcomes Leslie Ann Hall, founder and CEO of Iced Media (18:50). She and her team partnered with hair-care brand Moroccanoil to launch the brand’s first fine fragrance. The teams at Iced Media and Moroccanoil executed a campaign that levered social media for awareness and sales. They took home the Glossy Pop Award for "Best Use of TikTok."

Next, Lebsack sits down with Dana Paolucci, head of PR and influencer at Unilever-owned Dove North America (30:02). Paolucci and her team worked with communications firm Edelman to take home two Glossy Pop Awards for its Dove x Crumbl cookies body-care collaboration. They won "Best Product Launch Campaign" and "Best Community Engagement Strategy."

In our final mini interview, Lebsack welcomes Nilofer Vahora, Amika’s CMO, to discuss the hair-care brand’s "Best Use of Video" award win for its Superfruit Star Lightweight Hairstyling Oil launch with marketing company January Digital (40:03).

But first, Lebsack is joined by host Emily Jensen to discuss this week’s top beauty and wellness news.

Squishmallows, the TikTok-famous plush toy brand launched in 2017, made headlines this week for its foray into fine fragrance. Squishmallows parent company Jazwares, a Florida-based toymaker that was purchased by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2022, has tapped longtime beauty executive Joel Ronkin, current founder and CEO of Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie hair care, to lead the project. The scents launched at Ulta Beauty this week in two sizes, priced $38 and $58.

Lebsack and Jensen also discuss rumors that beauty conglomerate Coty is looking to sell heritage mass color cosmetics brands CoverGirl, Rimmel and Max Factor.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is also in the news this week for the closure of its 2-year-old mass beauty experiment, Good Clean Goop, which sells under-$40 skin care through Target and Amazon. The duo discusses the closure and what it means for masstige skincare.

Finally, the hosts walk through Amazon’s new ambitions in K-Beauty with this week’s launch of a dedicated storefront. It's a smart move considering the rise in popularity of K-Beauty products and the stunning sales on the channel. To wit: K-Beauty is growing three times faster than Amazon’s average beauty category.