Closeup #MakeYourMove Film Series - Conquering Self-Doubt | Clapboard Ad Archive

Closeup #MakeYourMove Film Series

Description

Closeup’s #MakeYourMove Film Series, launched in the Philippines in September 2019, is a compelling campaign crafted by MullenLowe Group that uniquely blends storytelling with the beauty industry's core message of confidence and connection. This film series features three diverse narratives that delve into the universal experiences and barriers that prevent people from getting closer, such as discrimination, social judgment, and emotional baggage. At the heart of these stories is the revelation of the biggest obstacle—self-doubt—and the empowering message that one can overcome it through courage and self-assurance. One standout film, "She’s Dating A Youngster," challenges societal norms by portraying a couple where age is portrayed as just a number, emphasizing that genuine connection transcends external judgments. Closeup leverages this narrative to inspire viewers to embrace their own love stories boldly, encouraging them to #MakeYourMove and be #FreeToLove. By addressing real-life emotional struggles and societal pressures, the campaign establishes a strong emotional connection with its audience, positioning Closeup not just as a beauty brand, but as a catalyst for confidence and personal empowerment. These films are designed to go beyond traditional advertising by fostering empathy, inclusiveness, and inspiration, prompting viewers to rethink their own fears and embrace intimacy with openness and conviction. This approach strategically enhances brand relevance and loyalty by linking Closeup’s product promise with the aspirational idea of breaking barriers to love and connection in everyday life. The campaign’s thoughtful blend of storytelling, social insight, and aspirational messaging demonstrates a powerful communication strategy that resonates deeply within its cultural context, motivating people to overcome self-doubt and truly make their move toward closer relationships.

Credits

Client

Closeup

Agency

MullenLowe Group, MullenLowe Philippines, Makati City, Philippines

Producer

Jenny Abad-Santos

Account Management

Tricia Egargo, Gerald Lim, Kristine Verzo, Aimee Sarmiento

Copywriter

Colleen Legaspi

Art Director

Iya Parungao

Creative Director

Roman Carlo Olivarez

Executive Creative Director

Abi Aquino, Leigh Reyes

More like this

Skincare influencer’s explosive tell-all

Launched in April 2021 in Australia, the campaign BREAKING: Skincare influencer’s explosive tell-all was developed for Cetaphil by the ad agency Emotive and delivered through a single impactful film asset. This campaign boldly captures attention within the beauty industry by featuring a whistleblower influencer who reveals startling truths about the skincare world, designed to provoke curiosity and challenge consumer perceptions. Leveraging a compelling narrative style, the film aims to engage audiences emotionally and intellectually by promising an inside look that disrupts typical skincare marketing messaging. With over 716,000 views, the campaign demonstrates strong reach and resonance, sparking interest despite a modest engagement footprint in likes and comments, reflecting a focus on awareness-building rather than interactive dialogue. The language used is English, ensuring accessibility to the Australian market. This strategically crafted communication highlights Cetaphil’s transparency and commitment to honesty in skincare, positioning the brand as both trustworthy and aligned with informed consumer choices. Through this creative storytelling approach, the campaign strengthens brand relevance in a competitive beauty sector by addressing consumer skepticism and establishing an authentic, insightful brand voice.

Invisible Make Up - Jequiti | Clapboard Ad Archive

Jequiti’s 2018 Invisible Make Up campaign, crafted by BETC for the Brazilian beauty market, directly confronts entrenched societal expectations about women’s appearance in professional settings by staging a social experiment that strips makeup of its traditional role as a confidence booster visible to the wearer. Partnering with recruitment firm Mappit, the campaign invited women to have their makeup professionally applied on the day of a job interview but barred them from seeing their reflection until after the interview concluded, challenging the assumption that makeup is a prerequisite for professional success or self-assurance. Released online strategically on the eve of Labor Day during a period marked by economic uncertainty and high unemployment in Brazil, the campaign underscores Jequiti’s positioning as a brand that empowers women by emphasizing competence and inner confidence over external appearance. Through a single film asset, the narrative unfolds with a compelling emotional arc that captures the participants’ evolving self-perceptions and the interviewers’ responses, delivering a powerful message that beauty products serve as tools for empowerment rather than masks of necessity. This approach sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#5 EXEMPLARY STORY category, where the product plays an integral role in the plot’s development and resolution, illustrating how makeup can support confidence without being the defining factor in personal or professional worth. The campaign’s intelligent use of real-life contexts and authentic reactions elevates it beyond conventional beauty advertising, sparking meaningful conversations around gender norms and the pressures women face in the workforce. Clapboard rates this campaign 61/100. Invisible Make Up matters to the industry because it demonstrates how beauty brands can leverage social insight and cultural moments to redefine product relevance in ways that resonate beyond traditional aesthetics, signaling a shift towards purpose-driven storytelling in the category.

Campaign Proposition

The Closeup #MakeYourMove Film Series campaign centers on the brand’s core proposition of empowering individuals to overcome internal barriers—primarily self-doubt—in order to confidently pursue romantic connections. By highlighting how self-doubt eclipses external obstacles such as discrimination, social judgment, and emotional baggage, the campaign positions Closeup as a catalyst for personal confidence and authenticity in intimate relationships. This promise aligns with the brand’s broader value of fostering closeness through genuine self-expression and courage. Strategically, the campaign leverages culturally resonant narratives rooted in common social challenges faced by its target audience in the Philippines. The use of three distinct love stories allows for a nuanced exploration of diverse relational dynamics, breaking stereotypes around age, social acceptance, and emotional vulnerability. This narrative approach acknowledges the complexities and emotional hesitations of young adults navigating love, effectively engaging viewers by reflecting their lived realities and aspirations. The #MakeYourMove hashtag serves as a call-to-action, reinforcing the message of empowerment and encouraging audience participation in redefining intimacy norms. By integrating emotional storytelling with relatable themes, the campaign aims to deepen brand relevance among youth seeking affirmation to express love freely, thus carving a meaningful space for Closeup within the competitive beauty market.

Creative Device

FORMAT#5 EXEMPLARY STORY — Tells a story where the product plays a vital role in the plot or resolution. This campaign fits the Exemplary Story format because it centers around three narrative-driven films, each following couples facing real emotional and social barriers—discrimination, judgment, and self-doubt—in their journey to get closer. The narrative arc in each film highlights conflict, showcases individual struggle, and resolves with the protagonists overcoming obstacles, with Closeup playing an enabling role by providing the confidence to #MakeYourMove. The storytelling places the product as a catalyst in helping characters achieve intimacy, directly tying their resolution to the brand’s promise.

You are Life - RBFY | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

You are Life - RBFY | Clapboard Ad Archive

RBFY’s 2023 campaign You are Life redefines beauty marketing by centering the lived experiences of mothers, particularly single mothers, through a children’s book that celebrates the emotional and physical journey of pregnancy and motherhood. Developed by INNORED in South Korea, the campaign breaks conventional beauty industry norms by shifting focus from product-centric storytelling to an empathetic narrative that validates the complex realities women face during pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare. The children’s book serves as a poignant medium to communicate the brand’s philosophy that both mother and child embody invaluable life forces, portraying pregnancy not as a medical condition but as an adventurous and transformative process marked by vulnerability and strength. Recognizing the lack of representation for single-parent families in traditional children’s literature, RBFY crafted this bespoke story to resonate authentically with mothers raising children alone, addressing the emotional challenges their families encounter and providing children with affirming narratives free from absent-father archetypes. The brand’s commitment to inclusivity extends beyond storytelling; it actively engaged its core audience throughout the creative process, conducting surveys and soliciting feedback via Instagram to refine the book’s content and illustrations. This co-creative approach ensured the narrative was accessible and engaging for children while fostering a meaningful connection between RBFY and its community of mothers, reinforcing the brand’s identity as a trusted advocate rather than a mere cosmetics provider. By condensing multiple storylines into one focused volume, RBFY enhanced the book’s readability and impact, demonstrating a deep understanding of the cognitive needs of young readers. The campaign’s strategic use of FORMAT#10—Associated User Imagery as classified by Clapboard—places real mothers and their experiences at the heart of its communication, making the brand’s messaging relatable and aspirational without resorting to dramatization or conventional beauty tropes. The You are Life campaign earns 72/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matters to the industry because it signals a shift toward holistic brand storytelling that transcends product promotion to authentically engage underserved audiences through culturally sensitive narratives and participatory creation.

Halloween in Kikoland - KIKO | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Halloween in Kikoland - KIKO | Clapboard Ad Archive

Halloween in Kikoland by KIKO, created in partnership with The Big Now for the beauty market in 2017, is a film campaign that immerses viewers in a surrealist journey inspired by the celebrated tea party scene from Alice in Wonderland, leveraging this iconic pop culture tableau to showcase the brand’s dynamic color palette and transformative cosmetic artistry. Placing four central characters at the heart of a twist-laden, candy-colored fantasy, the film abandons everyday beauty tropes in favor of spectacle, allowing makeup to become both mask and performance in a way that befits Halloween’s celebratory embrace of reinvention. The creative approach sits squarely in Clapboard's FORMAT#12—Parody or Borrowed Format, grounding its narrative and visual codes in a world deeply familiar to audiences but made vivid anew through the lens of KIKO’s makeup universe. The set design, storytelling, and highly stylized looks reinforce the brand’s message of creative self-expression, where product application becomes part of the plot rather than a product demonstration or tutorial. The Big Now’s execution blurs the line between fantasy and commerce, positioning KIKO less as a utility brand and more as an enabler of imaginative transformation, inviting beauty consumers to push beyond the everyday and embody the fantastical characters of Kikoland. The film delivers on the rising expectation within the beauty category for immersive, story-driven content, while the campaign elements drive back to the brand’s digital channels, reflecting a contemporary understanding of engagement and community-building beyond the single media touchpoint. What distinguishes Halloween in Kikoland is its use of pop cultural reference not as mere pastiche but as an inventive creative engine, deploying rich art direction and a strong sense of narrative place to ensure the borrowed format doesn’t overwhelm the brand’s own voice. Clapboard rates this 67/100. As beauty players increasingly turn to narrative world-building and genre-savvy campaigns, Halloween in Kikoland signals how familiar cultural codes can be strategically redeployed to refresh seasonal marketing and deepen brand distinctiveness.

like.share.love - Meril | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

like.share.love - Meril | Clapboard Ad Archive

Meril’s like.share.love campaign, devised by Sun Communications for the beauty sector in 2019, distills the paradox of modern intimacy with sharp clarity: as technology weaves us together, it also drives emotional distance, particularly within relationships meant to thrive on nuance, intimacy, and touch. This film-led effort leans heavily into the symbolic over the literal, presenting the now-ubiquitous scene of couples inhabiting parallel digital lives, tethered more to their devices than to each other. The creative execution, which Clapboard’s 12-format taxonomy would identify as FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem, sidesteps heavy-handed dramatizations of mobile addiction and instead layers metaphor and analogy to expose the social drift catalysed by omnipresent notifications. Against a backdrop of beauty-industry tropes promising transformation and allure, Meril introduces a distinctly human message: let mobile rest and place real value in the tangible, irreplaceable warmth of holding a loved one’s hand. The campaign reframes technology from being an enabler of connection to a barrier, urging viewers to reclaim the authenticity and freshness found in lived moments over curated digital engagement. Resonating deeply in the context of Valentine’s Day—a temporal hook where emotional resonance and relationship introspection run high—the campaign is grounded not in didacticism but in a soft, relatable urgency: express love in reality, before habitual distraction becomes permanent detachment. This strategy not only aligns seamlessly with Meril’s brand positioning around fresh beauty but expands the conversation to encompass emotional hygiene and presentness as facets of attractiveness and personal well-being. Already amassing significant traction, the film’s reach—exceeding 700,000 views—reflects an appetite for storytelling that acknowledges the nuanced costs of perpetual connectivity while offering a sincere, restorative counterpoint. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matters because it demonstrates how beauty brands can move beyond surface-level transformations to prompt cultural self-examination, providing a blueprint for emotionally intelligent storytelling at the intersection of personal care and relationship culture.

New Collection Risqué Brazilian Nude Mixture - Risque | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

New Collection Risqué Brazilian Nude Mixture - Risque | Clapboard Ad Archive

Risqué’s 2018 campaign for its Nude Mistura Brasileira collection, conceived by Ampfy and operating in Brazil’s beauty sector, deploys a visually eloquent stunt to redefine the idea of nude in cosmetics: an air acrobatic ballet where dancers’ bodies are imprinted with a spectrum of nude shades that mirror the nuanced skin tones of Brazilian women. This striking film sequence avoids literal demonstration and celebrity endorsement, instead opting for poetic choreography and compelling visual metaphor, turning the transfer of color onto skin into an emblem of collective identity and inclusivity. The campaign’s creative force lies squarely in what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#9—Symbolize the Benefit, using exaggerated visual symbology rather than exposition to dramatize the core proposition: nude is not a monolith, but a dynamic, beautiful blend, and Risqué’s collection was formulated for this very diversity. Throughout the film, remarkable attention is paid to movement and skin—each dancer twists and soars, accumulating vestiges of the collection’s nude palette upon their bodies, visually narrating that every tone belongs and every mixture is both visible and celebrated. This choreography is more than performance art; it is a statement that aligns Risqué’s product promise with a cultural sentiment—the recognition that beauty, especially in Brazil, is plural, evolving, and fundamentally inclusive. The film’s tagline underscores this territory, and the supporting hashtag amplifies both pride and participation, inviting the audience to locate themselves within the brand’s color narrative. Garnering over 13.9 million views, the film demonstrates how bold artistic statements, when strategically linked to product truth, can command attention and provoke cultural dialogue in a saturated beauty market. Brand, agency, and medium work in concert to deliver a multidimensional message with sharp conceptual clarity, avoiding reductive storytelling tropes by letting the very act of marking skin serve as a vivid metaphor for identity and belonging. The campaign earns 73/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. In a category too often defaulting to one-size-fits-all messaging, Risqué’s air ballet signals that celebrating nuanced identity can be as compelling in brand storytelling as it is essential in beauty innovation.

Born this Way - Lux | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Born this Way - Lux | Clapboard Ad Archive

Born this Way is a 2021 campaign from Lux and Wunderman Thompson South Africa that situates the beauty brand firmly within Unilever’s global Positive Beauty vision by advocating for an inclusive and equitable definition of beauty that transcends societal judgments and celebrates authentic self-acceptance. At the campaign’s core is Olympic champion Caster Semenya, whose public battle against discriminatory World Athletics regulations—mandating hormone-suppressing treatments due to her hyperandrogenism—serves as a compelling real-world narrative through which Lux channels its brand voice to champion dignity, resilience, and individual strength. By aligning with Semenya’s story, Lux rejects narrow beauty ideals and institutionalized gender biases, positioning the campaign as a bold act of brand activism that leverages FORMAT#8—Ongoing Characters or Celebrities—to build a meaningful association between its identity and Semenya’s fight for justice and equality. This strategic choice transforms Semenya from mere spokesperson to emblematic figurehead, enabling Lux to embody a powerful cultural moment within South Africa’s socio-political landscape, where the national Parliament has officially condemned the World Athletics ruling as a human rights violation and committed to supporting her cause. The campaign’s digital amplification via #IStandWithCaster and #MyBeautyMyStrength mobilizes a socially conscious audience toward collective action, including petition signing, thereby expanding Lux’s reach beyond product messaging into the realm of social impact and empowerment. Lux’s messaging insists that no woman should be stripped of her identity or judged for innate traits, which ties directly into its broader Positive Beauty framework that values diversity and self-defined strength. Clapboard rates this campaign 73/100. This campaign matters to the industry because it demonstrates how beauty brands can authentically integrate brand purpose with real-world social justice issues to deepen consumer trust and differentiate themselves in a competitive market while fostering meaningful cultural conversations.