Black Opal, a skincare and makeup brand designed for women of color, is following Dove and many other beauty brands with the launch of its ?I Define My Beauty? social media campaign by using a hashtag to combat stereotypes.

Similar to Dove?s #SpeakBeautiful hashtag, Black Opal is encouraging women to post to Twitter and Instagram with stories of expressing individuality including the hashtag #IDefineMyBeauty. This is not surprising considering that this marketing trend is becoming increasingly popular and the company has a long history of honoring heritage and individuality.

?When marketers aim to connect with consumers, they give a lot of thought as to what initiatives their target audience is passionate about,? said Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile, New York.

?This is particularly important for campaigns that aim to get consumers to share or re-post content,? she said. ?People are only going to post brand-related content if it strikes a chord with something they care deeply about.?

A woman with Jamaican heritage searching for more products made for her skin tone founded the company in 1994 along with a product formulator and a dermatologist. The company has since been focusing on multicultural beauty and celebrating those who dare to be different.

Starting the conversation
The campaign started off with a mobile-optimized video on YouTube quoting different men and women from all cultures who work in the beauty industry describing how they define beauty as an individual.

Beauty is in the hands of the beholder

The video opens with different people filling in the sentence ?I define my beauty?? with their own words while holding a sign of the same phrase. The video then goes on to interview various women on the street about different stereotypes in the beauty world.

One of the stereotypes that Black Opal plans on shattering is the thought that black women cannot wear bright-colored makeup. Color Splurge is the brand?s line of makeup with highly pigmented color that it is promoting through Twitter and Instagram.

Pictures of different makeup and beauty styles can be found on Instagram, while quotes of commonly heard comments about various stereotypes can be seen on Twitter through #idefinemybeauty.

Similar campaigns
Dove?s Campaign for Real Beauty and I Define My Beauty are not the only campaigns to embrace this format. 

Benefit launched a social media campaign in 2014 supporting women?s bonds and beauty with the hashtag #WingWomen. The brand dedicated a whole weekend in September to it with giveaways through social media accompanied by in-person events including classes, more giveaways and meet-and-greets.

However, it is not just beauty companies that are taking this marketing route. Always, Procter & Gamble?s feminine hygiene brand, took away the negative connotations to the phrase ?like a girl? with a hashtag of the term.

Verizon encouraged young girls not to scare away from starting careers in more challenging fields such as engineering and technology with #Inspirehermind.

Dove?s current project with Twitter supports women speaking positively about themselves after a study shows that during red carpet season women are 50 percent more likely to make negative comments about themselves (see story).

Black Opal wants to steer away from pigeonholing diverse beauty in this campaign and instead hopes to include everyone by making products multicultural.

The U.S. Census Bureau has discovered that there has been a 32 percent increase between 2000 and 2010 of mixed-race Americans. Black Opal creates products for these men and women while encouraging women not to shy away from being different. But it is unclear whether this particular campaign will work out for them. 

?The brand?s social following is active but not reflective of the scale at which the brand is currently operating,? Ms. Lowy said.

?While the campaign has certainly garnered visibility from Black Opal's active follower base, the brand?s social following is relatively small," she said. "Black Opal would therefore do well to consider how it could spread this campaign to consumers who are not subscribed to the brand?s content or work on growing it?s social following.?

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York.