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.
Discover
5W's research made one thing clear: consumer tech reviewers would cover Laifen's specs, but specs alone don't build a brand people feel connected to. The category Laifen actually needed to win wasn't tech, it was beauty and style, a category where trust is built through faces people recognize, not features on a spec sheet.
Define
“A hair tool doesn't earn a beauty story until a stylist puts it in a celebrity's hands.”
5W repositioned Laifen's engineering as a design and styling story by putting the product in a celebrity hairstylist's hands. That move gave beauty and lifestyle editors a reason to cover the brand.
How 5W ran the program
Drive
- Translated specs into style stories. Distinctive, aggressive pitching across beauty, lifestyle, and tech outlets recast Laifen's performance technology as design-forward, not just functional.
- Partnered with a celebrity hairstylist. Alignment with Bryce Scarlett, whose work with Hailey Bieber and Charli XCX put Laifen into red carpet and award-show beauty coverage.
- Built an awards strategy for third-party validation. A TIME Innovation 2024 Award for the Wave Toothbrush gave the brand independent credibility beyond its marketing.
- Anchored coverage to tentpole retail and tech moments. Prime Day, holiday gift-giving, IFA, and on-site CES support kept Laifen in the news cycle year-round.
Results
500+ brand & product placements · 24B+ impressions
In under two years, Laifen went from an unknown import to a brand with a real presence in beauty, tech, and culture.
- Placements grew 262%, and impressions grew 104% year over year.
- Seven-plus editorial award wins, including 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.
- 40 earned placements and 2.4B+ impressions in a single week around Amazon Prime Day.
- An 11-award CES 2026 media blitz produced 24 media placements, including full features in the LA Times, The Shortcut, and Techlicious.
Coverage included
