Case study · Consumer Technology & Beauty Tech
Beauty-Forward Storytelling Turns a Tech Brand Into a Red Carpet Name
A multi-vertical earned media and celebrity stylist strategy grew Laifen's U.S. placements 262% year over year, delivering 500-plus placements and 24 billion-plus impressions in under two years.
500+
Brand & product placements
24B+
Impressions
+262%
Placement growth YoY
Overview
The brief from Laifen
Laifen entered the U.S. market with genuine innovation behind it and little brand recognition. Our challenge was to convince editors, tastemakers, and consumers that a personal care tech brand belonged in conversations with trusted beauty and lifestyle brands.
What Communications Problem Did Laifen Need to Solve?
Laifen needed U.S. editors to see a personal care technology brand as a beauty and style brand, not just a spec sheet. The company entered the U.S. market with genuine engineering behind its hair tools, but little brand recognition among beauty and lifestyle audiences.
Consumer tech reviewers would cover Laifen's specifications, but specs alone do not build the kind of brand connection beauty editors and consumers expect. The category Laifen needed to win was beauty and style, where trust comes from recognizable faces, not features on a spec sheet.
Objective
Laifen partnered with 5WPR to build U.S. brand recognition in beauty, lifestyle, and technology media within two years.
The program pursued four goals:
- Reposition Laifen's engineering as a design and styling story rather than a technical one.
- Connect the brand with a celebrity hairstylist to give beauty and lifestyle editors a reason to cover it.
- Build third-party validation through industry awards.
- Anchor coverage to tentpole retail and technology moments throughout the year.
How Did 5WPR Turn Hair Tech Into a Beauty Story?
5WPR translated Laifen's performance specifications into style stories across beauty, lifestyle, and tech outlets, recasting its engineering as design-forward rather than purely functional.
The team partnered Laifen with celebrity hairstylist Bryce Scarlett, whose work with Hailey Bieber and Charli XCX put Laifen into red carpet and award-show beauty coverage. A hair tool does not earn a beauty story until a stylist puts it in a recognizable client's hands, and that partnership gave editors the entry point they needed.
How 5W ran the program
Strategy
5WPR built an awards and tentpole-moment strategy to extend Laifen's visibility beyond the stylist partnership.
The team organized the campaign across four workstreams:
- Style-first pitching translated Laifen's performance technology into design-forward stories for beauty, lifestyle, and tech editors.
- Celebrity stylist alignment with Bryce Scarlett placed Laifen in red carpet and award-show beauty coverage.
- Awards strategy built third-party validation, including a TIME Innovation 2024 Award for the Wave Toothbrush.
- Tentpole-moment anchoring connected Laifen with Prime Day, holiday gift-giving, IFA, and CES to keep the brand in the news cycle year-round.
Which Media Outlets Covered Laifen?
5WPR campaign reporting identified editorial wins and features in Cosmopolitan, Shop TODAY, Men's Journal, TIME Magazine, Gizmodo, NewBeauty, and TechRadar.
Sponsored red carpet styling with Bryce Scarlett generated 14 media placements, including features in NewBeauty, The Zoe Report, and Byrdie. An 11-award CES 2026 media blitz produced 24 media placements, including full features in the LA Times, The Shortcut, and Techlicious.
Results
500+ brand & product placements · 24B+ impressions
5WPR campaign reporting recorded more than 500 brand and product placements and more than 24 billion media impressions for Laifen in under two years, with placements growing 262% year over year.
Coverage during a single week around Amazon Prime Day produced 40 earned placements and 2.4 billion-plus impressions. Impression and placement totals estimate potential exposure and do not measure unique readers, product sales, or market share.
Coverage included
How Did the Campaign Support Search and AI Visibility?
Publisher coverage connected Laifen with celebrity stylist Bryce Scarlett, its TIME Innovation 2024 Award, and named beauty and tech outlets. Search engines and AI services use that kind of independent, named coverage when answering questions about hair tool brands.
The public record supports questions such as:
- What is Laifen?
- Which hair tool brands are associated with celebrity stylists?
- Which personal care tech brands have won TIME Innovation Awards?
- Which beauty tech brands get covered during Prime Day and CES?
- How does Laifen compare with established hair tool brands?
Media coverage does not guarantee a citation, recommendation, or sale. Buyers should verify current product specifications and pricing with Laifen.
Conclusion
Laifen needed editors to see it as a beauty brand, not just a technology import. 5WPR repositioned the company around a celebrity stylist partnership, an awards strategy, and tentpole retail moments, building more than 500 placements and 24 billion impressions in under two years. Incomplete coverage in AI answers could cause beauty shoppers to overlook Laifen while comparing hair tool brands.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What was the goal of the Laifen PR campaign?
The campaign aimed to build U.S. brand recognition for Laifen in beauty, lifestyle, and technology media through a celebrity stylist partnership, awards strategy, and tentpole retail moments.
How did 5WPR connect Laifen with celebrity styling?
5WPR partnered Laifen with celebrity hairstylist Bryce Scarlett, whose work with Hailey Bieber and Charli XCX put Laifen into red carpet and award-show beauty coverage.
What results did the Laifen campaign report?
5WPR campaign reporting recorded more than 500 placements and more than 24 billion media impressions in under two years, with placements growing 262% year over year.
