Maybelline and Miley Cyrus Bring Back the Jingle That Defined a Generation
Maybelline's 2025 film campaign titled 'Maybe It's…' stars Miley Cyrus as global spokesperson, reimagining the brand's historic 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' jingle as a new original song performed by Cyrus — created by agency Gotham NY and directed by Jacob Bixenman for the United States market.
Maybelline announced Miley Cyrus as its global spokesperson on September 24, 2025, as reported by PRNewswire. The campaign marks a deliberate departure from the brand's 'Make It Happen' platform, which had anchored Maybelline's positioning from 2015 through 2023, according to The Brand Hopper. In reviving 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' — one of the most recognised sonic identities in beauty advertising — Maybelline signals a return to the emotional, aspirational register that originally defined its brand voice. The film format, directed by Jacob Bixenman with Creative Director Francesca Musso leading the creative vision at Gotham NY, brings that return to life through a music-video aesthetic that bridges Cyrus's pop identity and Maybelline's heritage. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100.
In the United States, the campaign was published in October 2025 and contains a single primary film asset, as confirmed by Ads of the World. The new jingle launched simultaneously on Spotify and Maybelline's owned brand platforms in September 2025, according to Yahoo. Complementing the hero film, Maybelline ran a consumer jingle-creation contest between September 29 and October 27, 2025, as reported by Glossy, extending the campaign's participatory energy beyond paid media and into user-generated content. Cyrus herself described the partnership in terms that reflect the campaign's autobiographical charge, stating through PRNewswire: 'I remember singing the Maybelline jingle as a kid and imagining it was me on the screen.' That personal narrative gives the campaign a credibility that purely transactional celebrity deals rarely achieve, and it anchors the film's emotional core in a lived relationship rather than a contracted endorsement.
Maybelline identified a specific cultural gap in the United States beauty market. Through a decade emphasising product performance and creator-led social content, the brand had accumulated functional credibility but had ceded the emotional, iconic territory that its original jingle once occupied. The decision to revive 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' with Miley Cyrus addresses that gap directly, using a figure whose own career arc — from childhood stardom to critically recognised artistry — mirrors the campaign's central proposition that beauty is simultaneously innate and chosen.
The strategic rationale is sharpened by competitive context. In the United States prestige and mass beauty space, L'Oréal Paris — Maybelline's stablemate under the L'Oréal Group — has long anchored its brand identity in the declarative 'Because You're Worth It' platform, maintaining emotional consistency over decades. Competitor NYX Professional Makeup, meanwhile, has built a distinctly digital-native identity through creator partnerships and social-first content. Maybelline's 'Maybe It's…' campaign positions the brand between those poles: it carries the emotional weight of a legacy platform while deploying Cyrus's cultural reach across streaming, social media, and traditional film simultaneously. The multi-creator extension documented by Glossy — incorporating creators Manny MUA, Sai de Silva, Isabel Clancy, and I Luv Sarahii — reinforces that dual positioning, ensuring the campaign speaks to both nostalgia-oriented and digitally engaged consumers in the United States.
The color cosmetics category provides a receptive environment for this approach. Grand View Research estimates the global color cosmetics market at over a hundred billion dollars, with sustained compound annual growth projected through the early 2030s. Within that expanding market, brand differentiation increasingly depends on emotional distinctiveness rather than product innovation alone, according to analysis from The Business Research Company. Maybelline's return to its founding sonic asset is, in that context, a strategically defensible move: it reclaims ground that competitors have not occupied and that the brand itself had vacated.
Director Jacob Bixenman leads the creative execution of 'Maybe It's…', bringing a music-video sensibility that suits both Miley Cyrus's performing identity and the campaign's central conceit of a reimagined jingle. Bixenman's direction, set against Director of Photography Rhys Scarabosio's visual language, produces a film that operates simultaneously as beauty advertising and as a standalone musical moment — a duality that expands the asset's utility across paid, earned, and owned channels.
Creative Director Francesca Musso's stewardship at Gotham NY shapes the campaign's overall visual and tonal register. The production team assembled for 'Maybe It's…' reflects the ambition of the project: hair by Bob Recine, makeup by James Kaliardos, styling by Bradley Kenneth, producing by Hallie Steck, and editing by Lauren Friedman, with post-production handled by Modern Post. That depth of craft talent signals Maybelline's intent to produce work that functions as culture rather than merely as advertising.
The single-asset film format is a considered strategic choice. Rather than diffusing creative energy across multiple executions, Gotham NY concentrated the campaign's impact into one primary piece of film, allowing the reimagined jingle — performed by Cyrus — to carry the full weight of the brand message. The new song, which reworks the 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' lyric structure, was released on Spotify and Maybelline's own platforms in September 2025, according to Yahoo, giving the musical element an independent life outside the visual film. The consumer jingle-creation contest, running from September 29 through October 27, 2025 as reported by Glossy, then extended Cyrus's creative act into a participatory framework, inviting audiences in the United States to claim the jingle's legacy for themselves — a structural move that transforms a passive viewing experience into active brand engagement.
The 'Maybe It's…' film accumulates measurable audience engagement. As documented on Clapboard, the campaign asset registers over nine million views alongside more than twelve thousand likes and twelve hundred comments, figures that reflect substantial organic reach for a single-asset beauty film in the United States market. Those numbers position the campaign well above typical engagement benchmarks for brand-led film content, though no independently verified paid-media performance data or sales-attribution figures are publicly available for this campaign.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on several compounding factors. The reimagined jingle creates immediate audio recognition among audiences already familiar with the original — a form of earned attention that paid media alone cannot replicate. Miley Cyrus's personal narrative, made explicit through her public statements reported by PRNewswire, transforms the celebrity partnership from endorsement into autobiography, raising the credibility ceiling of the message. The multi-creator layer documented by Glossy — extending across Manny MUA, Sai de Silva, Isabel Clancy, and I Luv Sarahii — distributes the campaign's reach across distinct audience communities in the United States, reducing dependence on any single platform or demographic cluster.
The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects a campaign with strong strategic clarity and notable cultural assets, while suggesting that fuller creative risk or deeper executional surprise might have elevated its overall impact. The decision to return to sonic heritage is sound; the primary creative question the score surfaces is whether a single film asset fully exploits the emotional range that both the jingle's history and Cyrus's performing range make available.
Maybelline's 'Maybe It's…' is a 2025 film campaign starring Miley Cyrus as global spokesperson. Created by Gotham NY and directed by Jacob Bixenman, it reimagines the iconic 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' jingle as a new song performed by Cyrus, published in the United States in October 2025.
Maybelline announced Miley Cyrus as global spokesperson on September 24, 2025, according to PRNewswire. The new jingle launched on Spotify and Maybelline's own brand platforms in September 2025, ahead of the film campaign's formal United States publication in October 2025 by agency Gotham NY.
Jacob Bixenman directed the 'Maybe It's…' film for Maybelline. Director of Photography Rhys Scarabosio handled the visual craft, with Creative Director Francesca Musso leading the overall creative at Gotham NY. The production team also included producer Hallie Steck and editor Lauren Friedman, with post-production at Modern Post.
The campaign reimagines 'Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline' — Maybelline's most recognised sonic identity. Cyrus performed a new song built on that lyric structure, released on Spotify in September 2025. Cyrus stated publicly through PRNewswire that she sang the original jingle as a child and imagined herself as the brand's face.
The Maybelline 'Maybe It's…' campaign featuring Miley Cyrus earns a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects strong strategic clarity and cultural resonance through the jingle revival, while indicating that bolder creative execution or a wider range of film assets could have further elevated the campaign's overall impact.
Maybelline extended the campaign through a consumer jingle-creation contest running September 29 to October 27, 2025, as reported by Glossy. The brand also partnered with creators including Manny MUA, Sai de Silva, Isabel Clancy, and I Luv Sarahii as part of a 360-degree campaign reaching distinct United States audience communities across multiple platforms.
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