Case study · Retail & Beauty
An Editor Preview Turns a 60-Year-Old Sale Into Beauty's Most-Watched Event
A four-week, editorial-first campaign built around Nordstrom's National Beauty Director delivered the retailer's most successful Anniversary Sale to date, with 617 placements and $6.5 million-plus in earned media value.
617
Media placements
9.15B+
Earned impressions
$6.5M+
Estimated media value
Overview
The brief from Nordstrom Beauty
Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale has been a retail fixture for more than 60 years, but beauty was one feature out of many. With just four weeks of lead time, 5W was tasked with making Nordstrom Beauty's Anniversary Sale unignorable.
Discover
5W's read on the summer sale news cycle: it's crowded with generic deal roundups, and most editors are numb to that kind of content. Standing out required something other outlets couldn't offer: access to the person deciding what products were worth featuring.
Define
“Editors don't tell stories about sales; they tell stories about which forty products made the cut and why.”
5W made Autumne West, Nordstrom's National Beauty Director, the center of the campaign, turning a retail event into an editorial relationship built on expertise and exclusive access.
How 5W ran the program
Drive
- Opened the sale with an intimate NYC press preview. Autumne West walked more than 35 top-tier editors from Vogue, Allure, Harper's Bazaar, and Marie Claire through the season's top exclusives and recommendations.
- Made Autumne the foundation of every pitch. Her role as a trusted industry expert added credibility and editorial weight across subsequent outreach.
- Locked an early exclusive. A two-page Us Weekly feature, print and digital, launched momentum ahead of a broad push.
- Personalized outreach by category. Skincare, fragrance, haircare, and cult-favorite tools each received tailored pitching angles.
- Tracked and followed up daily. Real-time monitoring kept Nordstrom Beauty top of the inbox throughout the three-week sale window.
Results
617 media placements · 9.15B+ earned impressions
The result was Nordstrom Beauty's most successful Anniversary Sale to date.
- 91 preview-driven stories across 19 outlets, double the prior year.
- Six expert-led features spotlighting Autumne West in InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, NewBeauty, People and Us Weekly.
- 25+ organic social posts from attending editors, reaching a collective 70K+ followers.
- Coverage across Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Allure, The Cut, Marie Claire, Town & Country, and Who What Wear.
Coverage included
More client work
