Founder Alicia Yoon on Peach Slices’ first campaign: ‘We’re going an inch wide and a mile deep’

By Tatiana Pile May 29, 2024

This month, skin-care brand Peach Slices, sister brand of K-beauty skin-care brand Peach & Lily, launched its first-ever campaign as it looks to deepen its relationship with consumers.

The 6-year-old affordable skin-care brand — no single product is priced higher than $20 — is available in all doors at Ulta Beauty, Walmart and CVS. It quickly gained traction for its straightforward approach to clinical skin solutions for stubborn skin problems. According to IRI data, in 2022, Peach Slices’ hero product, Acne Spot Dots, was the No. 1 selling blemish solution on the market.

As Glossy reported in November, after just five years in business, Peach & Lily reached $100 million in annual sales in 2023. Yoon confirmed the company is on track to surpass that benchmark this year but declined to comment on what percentage of sales can be attributed to Peach Slices. Across Instagram and TikTok, the brand has around 288,000 followers.

Dave Kimbell, CEO of Ulta Beauty, gave a shoutout to Peach Slices during Ulta Beauty’s second-quarter 2023 earnings call in August 2023, crediting the brand’s success to its social virality.

“The brand has been scaling so much, so it was important for us to pause and say, ‘Our community loves the brands and we want to show up for them where they are. Let’s have this conversation [about acne] with them and deepen that relationship,” founder Alicia Yoon told Glossy.

On May 1, Yoon and her team launched a robust marketing campaign titled “Problem Skin? No Problem!” to further normalize the conversation around acne and other skin concerns. The campaign features paid models with various skin concerns, from eczema to oily skin. It kicked off with a Peach Slices homepage takeover on peachandlily.com, a Peach Slices Instagram page revamp with new images and messaging about destigmatizing skin issue conversations, and an email campaign for deeper storytelling.

The campaign also included an OOH element. Throughout May, Peach Slices aimed to “paint the town pink” with billboards, digital ads and subway station takeovers in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. In Miami, investment included a floating digital boat ad on the South Florida coast.

In addition, the brand partnered with Uber, covering 15 of its cars across the three major cities with bumper-to-bumper Peach Slices. Those vehicles delivered VIP skin emergency rescue press kits to tastemakers including Calle y Poché (@calleypoche, 4.9 million Instagram followers), Rolph Alcide (@lordcaribbean, 147,000 Instagram followers) and Madi Webb (@madiwebb, 307,000 Instagram followers). The Miami fleet of Ubers also showed up at a brand takeover of El Car Wash, the No. 1 car wash in South Florida, Yoon said. While the Ubers were only present at five El Car Wash locations, customers at all 41 locations received free acne spot dots with every car wash. Locals could also text “PEACH” to 22322 to receive a free car wash service.

“We wanted to find all of the ways to easily show up for consumers, and in Miami, car wash culture is huge,” Yoon said.

Finally, also throughout May, the brand is running an SMS text message-based hotline for sharing skin tips, deals and prizes. The line is free for consumers, who can use it to contact a member of Peach Slices’s SOS skin-care squad for advice. Those SOS members will also be at the brand’s IRL activations in L.A., Miami and NYC.

“We are connecting with our community in person for the first time through this consumer activation and 360 [degree] campaign because we want to deepen that relationship [with the consumer] by bringing real skin talk front and center,” Yoon said. “We’re committed to inch-wide, mile-deep [growth and scaling]. So even though we have hit a very good scale in the U.S., it’s still just the beginning.”

“This year, we’ve seen Peach Slices grow in the high double digits … and we are continuing to see that momentum. It’s been exciting because the brand is so young,” Yoon said.