JVN Hair partnered with NoGood for their parent company’s largest product launch ever, where we increased revenue for Jonathan Van Ness by 298% for Q1 2022 Compared to Q4 2021.
140%
Blended ROAS
298%
Orders
475%
Paid Social Revenue
NoGood’s performance branding & rapid experimentation methodology have been crucial in growing the JVN brand.
The NoGood squad was dedicated to unlocking success since day 1 of our partnership and quickly ensured a high volume of sales.
Teresa Lo
VP of Growth Marketing, Amyris
Who is JVN?
Founded by celebrity hairstylist Jonathan Van Ness of the Netflix show Queer Eye, JVN is a haircare brand that transcends the typical celebrity-backed product line.
It’s a brand grown from the ground up – literally. The patented hemisqualane used in its formulations is derived from sustainable sugarcane grown and harvested for JVN. As a silicone replacement, the proprietary hemisqualane boosts softness, slip and shine without compromising hair health. Other natural ingredients, like cassia bark and moringa oil, aid in styling and boast impressive clinical claims.
The “Come As You Are” tagline is reinforced by its affordable price point. It’s accessible and affordable salon-quality haircare that’s impressive down to the molecular level.
Van Ness’s platform promotes inclusivity, positivity, and self-care. JVN is the physical embodiment of that ethos by shifting the industry towards empowering messaging paired with impeccable product quality.
Objectives
To educate, entertain, and connect with JVN’s target audience to grow brand authority, build a loyal community, and drive sales.
The first few months of a brand launch are crucial for building authority and credibility, especially in the saturated beauty & haircare space. We set out to apply a performance branding methodology to assist in JVN’s official launch, lay the grounds for sustainable growth, as well as develop the brand’s ethos and voice as a standalone brand outside of Jonathan Van Ness. Despite the challenge of growing in a highly saturated beauty vertical, we designed our strategies with the goal to acquire significant market share and position the brand as a dominant player.
We executed multiple creative and growth experiments to identify the channel mix and conversion journey that best resonate with the audience.
We set an ambitious timeline to plan, execute, and launch a go-to-market strategy for the brand within 1 month. In addition to launching the brand, we also aimed to develop, organize, and execute pivot product launch strategies for 3 new SKUs based on prior learnings, and to grow JVN’s following on TikTok at a cost-efficient rate.
From a sales perspective, the key objective was to identify and leverage key digital channels to drive traffic and revenue with profitable ROI. This involved a need to identify conversion rate optimization opportunities for increased conversions, and to implement various experiments within new & existing advertising channels to drive growth. We also set to launch and manage advertising campaigns to support B2B channels such as Sephora in both the US and Canada in an effort to increase brand awareness and cross-channel sales, as well as penetrate the Canadian market once shipping to the region became available.
Challenges
How could we establish authority and presence in a saturated industry while developing trust within the market for a new brand?
Although it was important to leverage Jonathan Van Ness’s brand to build authority and credibility, we faced a challenge to raise awareness about the brand beyond JVN’s existing fan base without diluting his personal brand or other strategic projects. Beyond just driving traffic, we also had to reach high-intent audiences with a specific interest in effective, sustainable, and empowering haircare — all the while overcoming advertising limitations due to App Tracking Transparency.
Squad
Queenie Leung
Sr. Growth Strategist
Isabel Bellino
Growth Strategist
Jared Glassman
Growth Marketing Manager
Sarah Murphy
Growth Marketing Manager
Marina Chilingaryan
Brand Strategist
Helena Yang
Creative Lead
Gianna Del Monte
Growth Strategist
Services Provided
- Performance branding strategy
- Growth marketing strategy & execution
- Paid social strategy
- SEM Strategy
- Search engine optimization
- Conversion rate optimization
- Community-led growth strategy
- Audience hyper-targeting
- Design, UX, and copywriting
Approach
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Adopted JVN’s brand to create a cohesive, consistent, and memorable creative across a variety of channels and ensured brand authority in the beauty industry
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Deployed rapid experimentation across multiple channels to achieve product-market fit as part of the product launch strategy
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Built a performance branding matrix to experiment with a variety of value propositions and creatives to identify the compilation of messaging and visuals that connected with the audience the most and drove the highest conversions
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Leveraged Jonathan van Ness’s digital presence and brand to deliver meaningful content, unlock customer loyalty, further maximize revenue, and drive sales
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Utilized UGC from influencers and community members to highlight real results from real people to provide more meaningful, relatable content
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Developed a holistic promotional strategy and calendar to increase revenue and maximize sales
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Diversified budget across non-traditional stages in the funnel to overcome recent iOS updates
Results
NoGood’s strategy aided in the parent company’s largest product launch ever.
In August 2021, the NoGood squad worked with the JVN team to launch the brand, using rapid experimentation across multiple channels to identify the optimal platform mix for sustainable and scalable growth.
We developed a performance branding matrix to experiment with a variety of value propositions and creatives, leveraging data-driven insights to pinpoint the exact combination of messaging and creative that resonated most with the audience and drove the highest conversions.
As a result, JVN surpassed industry-standard benchmarks in its first 90 days of operation — and it didn’t stop there. JVN continued to experience growth in Q1 of 2022 vs Q4 2021, exceeding the highest shopping period of the year, showing impressive growth of the brand. The nearly +300% increase in revenue and +140% increase in ROAS are strong indicators of how a holistic strategy can create long-term growth.
140%
Increase in Blended ROAS QoQ
298%
Increase in Orders QoQ
175%
Increase in Total Sessions QoQ
45%
Increase in Conversion Rate
345%
Increase in Revenue of Direct Managed Channels
475%
Increase in Paid Social Revenue
579%
Increase in Facebook Ads Revenue
451%
Increase in TikTok Ads Revenue
NoGood’s strategy aided in the parent company’s (Amyris) largest product launch ever in terms of units sold of its Complete Conditioning Mist, beating out more established portfolio brands by nearly double. The detailed launch plan built up anticipation by driving customers to SMS signup pages and created highly targeted, funnel-specific creative.
In addition to revenue growth and direct impact on the bottom line, NoGood’s community interaction campaign strategy prioritized building the JVN community on TIkTok to take the brand’s authority in the haircare space. At a low CAC of $0.12, the squad accrued 100K followers in under 2 weeks through an experimentation process across key content pillars such as haircare education, product use tutorials and tips, as well as trendy and reactive content that infused relevance and relatability into the strategy.
An integral part of the haircare brand is its connection to the founder — Jonathan Van Ness. The NoGood squad developed a strategy around leveraging Jonathan’s digital presence and reputation to further strengthen the brand’s presence and drive revenue.
From engaging with Jonathan’s community and developing a community for the new brand, developing ad creative featuring Jonathan, and testing campaigns from JVN’s personal accounts, we developed a holistic strategy pulling all the levers necessary to drive the haircare brand towards success.
Creative Samples
Best performing TikTok content provided by the JVN team and sourced from the JVN community was repurposed for TOF on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest based on our proprietary content pillar framework and asset choice strategy.
