Slow and steady: Inside Merit Beauty’s marketing strategy

Beyond spend, algorithms pose a subtler creative risk. “They serve everyone the same content, so art directors, marketers, creators all end up drawing from the same references,” she says. Morin actively encourages her team to work offline: sourcing campaign inspiration from museums, spending an “enormous amount of money” on vintage references such as ’90s magazines and Ebay ads — known for their strong art direction, disciplined typography and clear product storytelling — and in-person observation, all of which inform Merit’s pared-back, editorial approach to branding. An Amsterdam trip last summer, for example, influenced the brand’s updated blush colourways after Morin noticed locals wearing vivid, high-placed colour. “It wasn’t something I saw online, it was something I saw in the world.”

To counter algorithmic echo chambers, Morin herself uses multiple Instagram accounts with distinct algorithms to avoid creative tunnel vision. “Once you like one thing, it builds an entire world around that. You have to actively break out of that funnel to see something new,” she explains.

Still, platform performance varies and TikTok remains a challenge. “It [TikTok] functions off clickbait. If you refuse to do that — and we do — content doesn’t pick up the same way,” Morin says. Instead, the brand relies on lo-fi formats like showcasing five-minute makeup routines in the bathroom and working with recognisable cultural figures like actors Rae (known for TV show Insecure), Rutherford (Gossip Girl) and Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls) to create resonance on their own terms. “That’s done exceptionally well,” says Morin, on average generating a 14 per cent engagement rate, fourfold the average according to Dash Social, a social media management platform. Though, Morin acknowledges the brand has yet to scale meaningfully on the platform.

Instagram, by contrast, plays to Merit’s strengths. “It prioritises storytelling and beautiful content, which is much more intuitive for us,” she says. Surprisingly, print has also proved powerful. For its fragrance launch, the brand ran ads and scent strips in Vogue and Real Simple. “The response from our audience was huge. We’ve had a lot of success scaling channels no one else is really looking at.” For Morin, the platform is just the delivery mechanism. “We want to build a brand people believe in deeply, and that’s our scale metric. Platforms change, products change — but if that connection holds, we’re in a strong place.”

Essentially, the brand is betting on repetition, not reinvention; resonance, not reach to compete — despite the sheer discipline that’s needed to reject the market pressures. It’s a slower play in a faster market. But for Merit, that’s exactly the point.

Great Skin Double Cleanse is available 12 August 2025.

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