How One Beauty PR Agency Is Leveraging TikTok Shop

LONDON — Seen Group, the public relations and communications agency, is growing its beauty marketing platform Community x Seen, or CXS, which made its debut in 2022, followed by a U.S. launch in 2023.

The platform, which connects nano creators — or those with fewer than 50,000 followers — with beauty brands, is now pairing them up with TikTok Shop, which is the second-largest beauty retailer in the U.K., according to the agency.

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CXS is vetting beauty creators and then introducing them to TikTok Shop.

“Recruitment is always on. On average between the U.K. and U.S. we have over 1,000 new members sign up to the platform every month and that’s all organic. We also do a lot of proactive recruitment; our team is constantly looking on the channels for interesting new [beauty] creators,” said Olivia Gerrie, Seen’s managing director.

The partnership between CXS and TikTok Shop is an indefinite one.

In the new year, Seen Group will be expanding CXS into Ireland and Canada as a result of its success with the U.S. and U.K. markets.

“Ireland and Canada felt like natural next steps. We have such brilliant relationships with those markets based on the way that we already work with them within the Seen Group. There’s such incredible beauty behaviors and nuances to those markets that really excite us,” said Gerrie, explaining that CXS will be tapping into the local beauty zeitgeist of the two respective new markets.

Jane Walsh, Seen Group's CEO
Jane Walsh, Seen Group’s CEO.

Since January, CXS has grown its community members from 8,300 to 18,300, with a growth rate of 121 percent.

According to the agency, the platform reaches more than 320 million users across Instagram and TikTok.

Since the platform’s U.K. debut, CXS has amassed a community of more than 4,000 beauty-specific creators, and onboarded brands including L’Oréal Paris, Kylie Cosmetics, Milk Makeup, Jo Malone London, Charlotte Tilbury, Byoma and others in varying capacities.

“Social media has revolutionized the beauty industry, pushing the need for increased, faster, high-quality content to meet audience expectations and evolving algorithms,” said Jane Walsh, Seen Group’s chief executive officer.

“With our rapidly growing community of thousands of engaged creators worldwide, CXS answers this challenge by delivering impactful collaborations that keep pace with the dynamic world of contemporary beauty culture,” she added.

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