A number of weeks in the past, a Rhode billboard appeared on the highway alongside the best way to Coachella. Powder pink background, scorching pink kind, and multicolored daisies. It didn’t appear like Rhode’s typical visible model, which is outlined by delicate Swiss minimalism, conveyed in cool grays, white, and boxy sans serifs. It signaled one thing new. “See you down the Rhode,” it mentioned. What was on the different finish?
The billboard was half of a bigger product launch teed up on social the week earlier than: “spotwear” pimple patches and banana peel eye patches in partnership with Rhode founder Hailey Bieber’s husband, Justin Bieber, who carried out on the pageant (shout-out, Beliebers and lonely ladies).
The merchandise weren’t but accessible, however they might be on the model’s pageant activation, Rhode World. In the event you didn’t have one of many multi-tiered wristbands that bought you into Rhode’s home celebration, you would nonetheless really feel you have been a part of it when the merchandise launched the next week. Regardless of the place you might be, all roads result in the model. That was sort of the purpose.
That constant, discerning consideration to 360 levels of element can also be what’s made the model successful. Bieber, together with enterprise companions Michael D. Ratner and Lauren Ratner, flipped a billion-dollar business in three years. Rhode launched direct-to-consumer (DTC) in 2022, and E.l.f. Cosmetics acquired it a mere three years later in 2025 (and is now in retail).
Rhode’s aesthetically refined model and packaging place its merchandise as aspirational. And its model marketing, which facilities on an elevated, tightly configured visible identification, extremely editorial campaigns, is a large cause why. That it usually entails a revolving door of expertise we’re all already speaking about on-line (Sarah Pidgeon from FX’s Love Story! Harris Dickinson in his Babygirl moment!) doesn’t harm.
Name it advertorial, name it brandtainment, name it a confirmed system: whether or not it’s Skims, Gap, J Crew, or Rhode. Solely a type of firms is a magnificence model, although.
That’s as a result of, regardless that Rhode differentiated its merchandise early by specializing in peptides and “research-backed ingredients,” it doesn’t actually place itself as a magnificence model. As a substitute, it has efficiently grabbed the mantle of a life-style model with countless alternative for enlargement, as each model needs to do as of late.
“I’ve all the time approached our advertising and campaigns by means of a really editorial, fashion-first lens, which helped Rhode stand out early on,” Bieber tells Quick Firm. “It’s by no means been about following a conventional magnificence playbook, it’s about what feels natural to me and the aesthetic I’m naturally drawn to.”
Bieber says that very same intuition drives every part the model does. “From our campaigns to the expertise we work with, all of it comes from a real place of what I’m excited by within the second,” she says. “Greater than something, I feel our success comes from the world we’ve constructed across the model. I hesitate to name it a ‘life-style’ as a result of it’s actually an extension of my very own world, one thing we’re inviting folks into by means of Rhode.”
Logging on to its universe
I used to be first struck by Rhode’s inventive course when it launched pocket blushes in June 2024. It was a transparent sign of a playbook it’d faucet into time and again. A constant core model—brilliant white background, excessive flash that displays off the packaging—that created a set followers are aware of, with set items that may change. For the launch, Bieber and her in-house group, which labored with the company Chandelier Inventive, leaned into the pocket dimension of the blushes by visually playing with the idea of scale.
One video features an oversize Bieber waving again to teeny-tiny it-girl fashions Alex Consani and Paloma Elsesser. In different pictures, Elsesser and Bieber are perched atop the blush, and Consani peers at one blush the size of a fingernail. In others, they sign the blush title with prop styling: atop a juice box or a burnt marshmallow (Scarlett Johansson’s skincare model, the Outset, recently posted a very similar image).
The strokes of the logo blur with a soft pink gradient, signaling the flush a dab of the product provides to your cheeks. The result’s a playful however cleverly refined visible tackle the product providing itself.
The identical is true for the launch of Rhode’s lip shapes (or liners), which once more lived throughout the similar tight visible model codes. This product drop performed with scale, however used product naming conventions—spin, transfer, and lean, for instance—as visible inspiration. “I was a dancer,” Bieber says, including that she used that non-public expertise to lean into physique motion as inventive inspiration, and tapped Tate McRae to bring it into the campaign in a visible approach.
Bieber then instantly referenced excessive vogue for styling inspo—particularly these iconic ’90s Versace ensemble ads, which she revamped with socks, strappy heels, mini skirts, and sweaters.
However as an alternative of vogue, Bieber is promoting magnificence—and a extremely thought-about, culturally plugged-in standpoint. If you realize the reference, it builds cachet and high-end affinity for the model. In the event you don’t, it appears to be like like an unique and clear tackle ’90s nostalgia that’s in every single place as of late.
“We all the time actually like to faucet on nostalgia,” Bieber says. “We all the time are on the lookout for alternative ways to be impressed in several methods to articulate the story of that product.”
Moving into Rhode World
Rhode World is simply the newest instance of this. The model rented a mansion in Indio, California, the place Coachella takes place, and decked it out in colours that synced with the model’s new spotwear. (In the event you’re curious what Justin Bieber could be like as a inventive director, look to the Rhode x the Biebers assortment—he selected the colours, spotwear shapes, and total look of the marketing campaign, together with the brand.) Hailey Bieber, who’s the model’s chief inventive officer, was central to the appear and feel of the activation.
Bieber tells me she wished the activation to really feel like an amusement park, a nostalgic “Rhode World,” with drinks, meals, video games, and naturally, new product. Not like an precise carnival, Rhode World was invite-only, however everybody had entry to all the on-line content material that got here out of it, and that results in main model engagement, which ends up in gross sales. (The model doesn’t have any stand-alone shops, but it surely does do pop-ups that result in lengthy strains and plenty of content material.)
On this case, the model acquired greater than 60,000 new shoppers in a single week, and unit gross sales of the collaboration have been over six figures, in response to the corporate. Rhode-related content material surrounding the activation and the Rhode x the Biebers collaboration generated a mixed 290 million views, 16.6 million engagements, and $32 million in earned media worth, in response to CreatorIQ.
That’s the best engagements and likes ever, in response to the corporate. In the event you can’t inform from these numbers, most followers have interaction with model on-line anyway.
To view magnificence by means of Bieber’s lens
Participating right this moment’s shopper requires consistency, neighborhood, and tapping into broader tradition to realize relevance. More and more, it additionally requires adopting hi-fi editorial practices and the inventive expertise as soon as solely present in magazines and vogue to create cultural moments.
“From the start of making Rhode and launching it, I all the time mentioned that I wished it to be very editorial storytelling,” says Bieber. “Coming from the world of modeling, editorial was my favourite factor to shoot, since you create a world by doing that. You’re usually telling a narrative by means of visuals. And that was one thing that felt actually vital to me with this model as a result of, to me, it’s a lot extra and a lot larger than simply the skincare and sweetness model.”
Bieber’s inventive course of begins with the product. From there she considers it how she needs it to be represented and the way it makes her really feel. “I really like when one thing evokes a sense,” she says. “That’s one thing that’s actually, actually vital to me, and that was vital to me with the packaging, vital to me with the imagery, storytelling—with all of it, actually, however I feel that you simply invoke these emotions essentially the most by means of your visuals, by means of your storytelling and thru the product itself. ”
Then she digs for inspiration. “I’m like, ‘Okay, properly, this product makes me really feel this fashion, and that jogs my memory of this photographer, and the way he used to shoot this, and that jogs my memory of this one marketing campaign I bear in mind occurring in 1994.’ I begin with the product, after which I gather the information round it, after which it goes from there, when it comes to turning it into our personal world and making it the Rhode illustration of that product.”
What it doesn’t do is have interaction in social developments. You gained’t discover any trending sounds, dances, or tiny mics. As a substitute, there’s a gradual stream of life-style pictures that embody seemingly candid photographs of Bieber and influencers alike, sitting behind automobiles, sporting furs or Miu Miu boxers, and ingesting martinis, or that place Rhode merchandise subsequent to Dior make-up or a specific Alaïa Le Teckel bag that subtly construct high-end model affinity.
Person-generated content material (UGC), how-to slides, and product images carefully comply with the model’s impartial coloration palette too, often with one accent coloration tied to a product launch, like yellow or pink. This creates a tightly cohesive, if variable, grid (and model) search for its 4.6 million Instagram and a couple of million TikTok followers.
“They need to know why they need to spend any of their hard-earned cash on it,” says Bieber of on-line model constructing and visually ahead explainers on its web site. “Inside the branding and the storytelling, I additionally suppose info is vital: exhibiting folks, explaining to folks, describing to folks why you need to use it.“
The model has a vibe, and the vibe communicates a holistic persona. It’s a world shoppers can decide into. It balances authenticity with curation; speaking a premium skincare product utilized by younger folks with disposable revenue (although maybe not La Mer-level spending energy), cultural fluency, and discerning style. Moisturize? No. Peptide-fluent Rhode ladies flush, tint, and glaze their approach by means of the day.
And construct an industry-leading trendy model
So how precisely did Bieber, with out formal inventive or design coaching, make merchandise which can be so covetable? The attain of her public persona and that of the expertise she works with is one cause, however the slew of movie star skincare manufacturers that aren’t B-level (and by that, I imply, billion-dollar degree) present that alone isn’t sufficient.
“The product itself must be nice,” says Bieber. “Particularly relating to skincare and sweetness, the factor that folks care about most, the factor that I personally care about most as a product-obsessed particular person, is that the product itself works very well and it’s actually nice and it does what it says it’s going to do.”
The packaging additionally helps. “As a lady, I like issues which can be visually and aesthetically pleasing. I like pulling one thing out of my purse that’s cute. It makes me really feel one thing,” she says.
Aesthetics matter, too, on-line—and particularly when her skincare universe makes merchandise into equipment. That is likely to be a lip pencil pulled out of a handbag at dinner, a pimple patch, one among its make-up baggage, or most notably, its genius lip case, which shops Rhode lip peptide remedy on the again of 1’s cellphone. Content material associated to the case drove 126 million impressions and 1.1 billion in attain, in response to the corporate—to not point out a cottage {industry} of dupes.
Bieber describes herself as particular and choosy. “I do know what I like, what I don’t like,” she says. “I’m capable of make selections fairly shortly on how I need one thing to look, really feel, how I need you to expertise it.” Though the model approaches every marketing campaign conceptually, it constantly modifications the photographers and idea itself, so the storytelling is all the time completely different.
I ask Bieber for her do’s and don’ts of branding right this moment, and her response is fittingly decisive. “I feel a by means of line is a do and repetition is a don’t,” she says. “I by no means need us to repeat ourselves, however I do suppose a by means of line that feels persistently acquainted is vital.”
