Launched in 2019, the Sephora Squad became immediately synonymous with best-in-class influencer marketing — a program befitting the global prestige retailer. Armed with Sephora’s global purpose to create a welcoming beauty shopping experience and inspire fearlessness in their community, the Fohr team embarked on a mission to discover talent with an unmatched authentic passion for Sephora. The last five years, Sephora and Fohr’s partnership set the standard with a best-in-class ambassador and influencer marketing program, known by anyone with an interest in prestige beauty, fearless creatives, or wildly curious experimenters as Sephora Squad.
The Sephora Squad is a year-long paid partnership designed to work with influencers with varied reach, identities, and backgrounds across emerging and established platforms. The program is unique in its approach to talent, relying on proprietary technology that both verifies influencer reach and easily allows Sephora to vet thousands of applications at scale. From its inception, Sephora has partnered with Fohr to support their community, program, and tech management, utilizing Fohr’s SaaS product and a custom-built application vetting tool to find influencers with real brand love for Sephora. Ultimately, the partnership helps Sephora find influencers who have been traditionally underrepresented in the beauty space, and who also represent their their brand values of inclusivity, individuality, positivity, and belonging.
In 2021, the Sephora Squad application portal went live on www.SephoraSquad.com from March 9 to April 10. Roughly 120 finalists were announced on April 20, and the final 72 Sephora Squad members were selected shortly after that.
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In 2021, this 3rd year heritage program sought out to discover inspiring and underrepresented voices in the beauty industry. Sephora wanted “unique, unfiltered, sorry-not-sorry storytellers with a diverse range of followers, points of view, and interests”. Additionally, the program was particularly interested in tapping into talent with strong video skills on emerging and known platforms.
The Fohr team was tasked with continuing to innovate the program to entice a large variety of beauty lovers to apply, within constraints set by a standard of excellence. Ultimately, the Sephora team needed bespoke technology to evaluate, vet, authenticate and approve thousands of applicants quickly. They aimed to reach people who genuinely were passionate about and wanted to work with Sephora while honing in on individuals who would drive meaningful relationships for the full year.
The team at Fohr not only designed and executed a North American campaign to support the 3rd year launch but also introduced proprietary technology solutions to easily identify elements of authenticity such as verified reach. Applicants were also asked to gather testimonials from their followers to validate their influence, brand loyalty, and genuine capacity to handle a coveted role in the Sephora Squad.
Sephora’s partnership with Fohr led to elevated outcomes — making strides to cultivate and foster diversity, with 79% of accepted members as BIPOC. The program culminated in tens of thousands of applicants and 72 accepted members.
The 2021 Sephora Squad was validated by nearly 200,000 audience testimonials — allowing Sephora to find influencers whose followers loved their content as much as they loved Sephora.
Overall, Fohr’s close work with Sephora allowed them to recruit ambassadors at scale and partner with talent whose excitement for the brand came from a place of authentic love. Watch the Squad’s acceptance video here and learn what true passion for a brand looks like.
