The

Cosmetify

Index

It’s now two years on from the initial launch of the Cosmetify Index, ranking the world’s biggest beauty brands on factors such as their social reach and engagement, so how does the beauty landscape look in 2021?

We’ve taken a look at the biggest brands in the world, which have been on the rise in the last twelve months, as well as who are the hottest beauty influencers in 2021.

Hottest Brands Most Powerful Influencers Rising Stars Brands Losing Popularity Social Following By Country

Hottest Beauty

Brands, Ranked

To begin, we’ve taken a look at the 100 most searched beauty brands in the world, ranking them on: Instagram followers, Instagram engagement, Instagram mentions, Google search volume and change in search volume.

The top three brands in beauty remain unchanged, but there are still plenty of interesting updates to the index.

1

HUDA BEAUTY

Huda Beauty has consistently taken top spot in our ranking, which is little surprise when you see the numbers, with 49.5 million followers on Insta and 29.5 million hashtag mentions too. Founder Huda Kattan is a social media sensation and has truly lived the dream, going from starting out as a budding influencer to growing one of the biggest brands in the game.

2

M·A·C Cosmetics

Canadian brand M·A·C climbed one place, to second in our ranking, largely due to an impressive Insta following of 24.2 million. M·A·C is one of the biggest names in beauty and was also one of the most talked-about brands on social media, with 20.55 million hashtag mentions.

3

Anastasia Beverly Hills

Much like Huda Beauty, Anastasia Beverly Hills was built from the ground up by its visionary founder, Anastasia Soare and is now amongst the very best in the business, with over 25 million people posting about their products on social media. 2021 was a good year for the brand, especially here in the UK where it finally launched on the high street at Boots, over 20 years since the brand was initially founded.

4

Avon

Avon Products is one of the biggest beauty companies in the world and is known for its business model of using door-to-door salespeople and brochures to sell its products. Avon is now sold in over 100 countries around the world, with over 6.4 million representatives.

5

The Body Shop

The Body Shop drops from fourth to fifth in the rankings but remains the most searched beauty brand in the world, with just under 38 million Google searches in the last twelve months.

6

Yves Rocher

As we’ve seen in previous versions of the index, Yves Rocher is a huge brand globally, especially throughout Europe, although its search volume has dropped in comparison to previous years.

7

Florence by Mills

Florence by Mills is the creation of Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown and dropped out of the top five for this edition of the index, down to seventh. Once again, the brand has by far the highest level of social engagement, with an engagement rate of 2.31% although this has steadily been on the decline since the first edition of the index which launched around the same time as the brand.

8

Lush

Making the top ten for the first time is Lush, known for its creams, soaps, shampoos, lotions, moisturizers and more. One of the big selling points for Lush’s customers is the fact that all of its products are vegetarian-friendly, with around 85% also being suitable for vegans, with almost 1,000 stores in around 50 countries around the world.

9

Oriflame

Another newbie to the index is Oriflame, a Swedish-Swiss beauty and personal care company that is huge in Europe. Predominantly operating online, Oriflame has around 6,000 employees and over 1,000 products.

10

Kylie Cosmetics

Making her way back into the top ten with Kylie Cosmetics is Kylie Jenner. Like Anastasia Beverly Hills, Kylie Cosmetics made its long-awaited UK high street debut this year at Selfridges and Boots, meaning fans of the reality star’s lip kits and other cosmetics no longer have to pay those pesky international delivery fees!

Rank

Brand

Instagram
Followers

Instagram
Hashtags

Instagram
Engagement
Rate

Annual
searches

Year-on-
year
change in
searches

Overall
score
View All

The Most Powerful

Beauty Influencers

We also refreshed our look at 50 of the world’s most influential beauty influencers, which looks not just at the follower counts of our favourite Insta and YouTube beauty gurus, but also how much money they could potentially be earning from their sponsored posts.

1

James Charles

James Charles rises to top spot on our list of the hottest beauty influencers in the world, with almost identical followings on YouTube and Instagram (24.5 million and 24.4 respectively), for a combined total of just shy of 49 million, despite a couple of high profile controversies in the last year.

2

Bretman Rock

Since we last ran the Cosmetify Index just a few months ago, Bretman Rock has steadily seen his followers grow, with 17.8 million followers on Instagram alone. 2021 was a big year for Bretman too, starring in his own reality TV show, winning “Breakthrough Social Star” at the MTV Movie and TV Awards and becoming the first openly gay man to appear on the cover of Playboy.

3

Yuya

Mariand Castrejón Castañeda is better known as Yuya and is one of the biggest beauty vloggers and YouTubers in Mexico, with a combined Insta and YouTube following of 41.6 million people. However, the last year has seen her channel take a slightly different direction as she chronicles her pregnancy with her first child.

Rank

Name

YouTube
Subscribers

Estimated
YouTube
Earnings per
Video

Instagram
Followers

Estimated
Instagram
Earnings per
Post

Combined
Followers

Combined
Earnings per
Post
View All

Rising Stars

of Beauty

Next up, we also like to take a closer look at which beauty brands have seen the biggest increase in interest over the last twelve months.

2021 saw searches on the rise for a lot of brands as the sector started to recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

1

JLo Beauty

5,228% increase

With a huge search increase of over 5,000%, the clear winner here was the long-awaited beauty line from Jennifer Lopez, JLo Beauty. The line was announced in 2020 so had a modest search volume of 20,900, but after being released to the world in 2021 that exploded to 1.1 million searches in the last twelve months.

2

Mallows Beauty

2,846% increase

Mallows Beauty only launched in February 2020 and received a total of 1,670 Google searches between October 2019 and September 2020, but flashforward twelve months and searches have grown by an incredible 2,846%. The success of the brand has surpassed the expectations of even owner Laura Mallows herself, who set a target of £50,000 turnover in the business’s first year, before smashing that target within just the first month!

3

Le Prunier

866% increase

Another brand that has enjoyed a great year is Le Prunier, a facial oil with a waitlist of tens of thousands of people. Sustainably made from the pits of plums, Le Prunier helps to seal cracks in your skin barrier and maintain moisture, and enjoyed a big boost in popularity when it was featured on one of Chrissy Teigen Instagram Live sessions.

The beauty brands

losing popularity

1

Jeffree Star Cosmetics

- 72.2% decrease

One brand that frequently featured in the top 100 of previous editions of the Cosmetify Index but just missed out this year is Jeffree Star Cosmetics, and that’s because it didn’t quite make the cut of the 100 most searched brands, due to a 72% decrease over the last twelve months.

2

Kat Von D Beauty

- 71.6% decrease

Just behind Jeffree Star Cosmetics when it comes to an annual decrease in searches was Kat Von D Beauty, although not necessarily due to a drop in interest in the brand. That’s because in March, Kat Von D herself sold her shares in the brand, and it rebranded to KVD Vegan Beauty, so searches for its original name are starting to tail off.

3

Clinell

- 67% decrease

In previous editions of the index, we saw brands offering products such as hand sanitiser see an incredible increase in searches as we all took hygiene more seriously due to the pandemic, so it’s only natural that we now start to see interest in some of those brands decline too. That was the case with Clinell, who produce antimicrobial hand wipes and saw searches drop by 67%.

Biggest Social

Following

Social media is a huge tool for any business, but that’s especially true in the world of beauty. In fact, beauty brands are often among the most followed and engaged with on social media, using to their advantage to showcase tips and tutorials with their fans, as well as working with the ever-increasing number of beauty influencers and bloggers. But who are the beauty brands who are at the very top of the social media game?

1

Huda Beauty

49.5m Instagram followers

Probably the least surprising aspect of the Cosmetify Index at this stage is that Huda Beauty is by far the most followed beauty brand on Instagram. At the latest count, the brand had over 49.5 million followers, steadily closing on on the 50 million mark after adding around 1.5 million new followers since the last edition of the index.

2

Kylie Cosmetics

25.4m Instagram followers

It stands to reason that one of the most-followed people on social media is at the helm of one of the most followed beauty brands, with Kylie Cosmetics just edging out M·A·C in terms of Insta followers. Kylie herself has an incredible 282 million followers on the platform, so her brand’s impressive following isn’t even 10% of her own!

3

M·A·C Cosmetics

24.2m Instagram followers

In third place in terms of social following is M·A·C Cosmetics, with 24.2 million. M·A·C is one of the biggest cosmetics brands in the world with a social following to match and while it was initially created with professional makeup artists in mind, its mass appeal nowadays is clear to see.

1

Huda Beauty

29.54m posts

Huda also takes the crown when it comes to the highest number of hashtag mentions on Instagram, with over 29.5 million people posting about Huda and her products. That’s an increase of about 2.5 million from last year.

2

Anastasia Beverly Hills

25.65m posts

While Huda Beauty may take the top spot in terms of tagged posts, it’s not too far ahead, with Anastasia Beverly Hills having been tagged around 25.5 million times. Anastasia Beverly Hills started out as a smaller ‘indie’ brand but was propelled to the big time largely due to its excellent use of social media marketing.

3

M·A·C Cosmetics

20.55m posts

As was the case with social followers, M·A·C Cosmetics was the third highest-ranking brand for its number of tagged posts on Instagram, with 20.55 million.

1

Florence by Mills

2.31%

Florence by Mills has had an incredibly high social media engagement rate in each edition of the Cosmetify Index, and while that number has steadily dropped from around 7% in the first edition of the index to 2.31% this time around as the initial hype from the brand’s launch has potentially died down a little, that’s still a very impressive level of engagement for a big brand, especially one with 2.5 million followers.

2

RoC

1.53%

RoC is a much smaller brand, with just 118,000 followers on social media, but it’s often these smaller accounts that command higher engagement rates, with fewer fake followers and bots amongst their followings.

3

Glossier

0.89%

The brand with the third-highest engagement rate on Instagram is Glossier, at 0.89%. Glossier provide intuitive, uncomplicated skincare and beauty products in a narrow and focused range of around 40 products.

Each Country’s

Favourite Beauty Brand

One of the areas where we saw the biggest change in this edition of the Cosmetify Index was our look at each country’s favourite beauty brand.

While in previous years, the picture has largely been dominated by Yves Rocher, the addition of Avon and Oriflame made for a much more varied picture this year.

Other popular brands around the world included the Body Shop and Rituals and we once again saw a few brands which clearly have a strong presence in their home country, such as DHC in Japan, Fenty Beauty and Juvia’s Place in the Caribbean, Innisfree in South Korea, and Madara Cosmetics in Latvia.

KEY
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1

Avon

Favoured In

37

Countries

List
2

Oriflame

Favoured In

25

Countries

List
3

Body Shop

Favoured In

21

Countries

List
4

Yves Rocher

Favoured In

17

Countries

List
5

Rituals

Favoured In

12

Countries

List
6

Fenty Beauty

Favoured In

7

Countries

List
7

Vaseline

Favoured In

7

Countries

List
8

Bio Oil

Favoured In

6

Countries

List
9

Dove

Favoured In

4

Countries

List
10

Huda Beauty

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
11

Juvia's Place

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
12

ColourPop

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
13

CeraVe

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
14

Beauty Bay

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
15

Kiehl's

Favoured In

3

Countries

List
16

Cetaphil

Favoured In

2

Countries

List
17

Estee Lauder

Favoured In

2

Countries

List
18

La Roche Posay

Favoured In

2

Countries

List
19

Glossier

Favoured In

2

Countries

List
20

Innisfree

Favoured In

2

Countries

List
21

Nivea

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
22

Pixi

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
23

DHC

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
24

Madara Cosmetics

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
25

Beesline

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
26

Uriage

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
27

Ouai

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
28

Benefit

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
29

L'Occitane

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
30

Cantu

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
31

Shea Moisture

Favoured In

1

Countries

List
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