roberto cavalli x karen wazen

#KnowYourMIV: Karen Wazen x Roberto Cavalli Campaign

Céline Sabbagh

Welcome to our series #KnowYourMIV. To kick off our series this year, we examine the success of the major collaboration of Mega Influencer, Karen Wazen with Roberto Cavalli for the launch of their new perfume called Paradiso.  Karen is a Lebanese influencer and fashion entrepreneur based in Dubai. She began her digital influencer career by creating a blog called Karen’s Choice in 2016 and has now expanded this to an impressive fan base of over 7.3 million on Instagram alone and of more than 12 million of followers across her social media platforms. In December 2018, Wazen launched a namesake eyewear collection and was ranked in Forbes’ Women Behind Middle Eastern Brands List consecutively in 2019 and 2020. 

Earlier this year, Roberto Cavalli released the new campaign for their Paradiso perfume. This marks the first time a Middle Eastern women, Karen, becomes the face of a global Roberto Cavalli campaign and the first time Cavalli partnered with a social media star as a global spokesperson. The campaign was shot in Paris and was unveiled in February of this year. Dressed in the brand’s signature animal print, Wazen symbolizes the new brand’s code of confidence and modern glamour. To gauge the impact that the Karen Wazen x Roberto Cavalli Paradiso campaign generated, we used our proprietary data algorithm called Media Impact Value™ (MIV®).

#KnowYourMIV: Karen Wazen x Roberto Cavalli

Overall, the campaign generated an impressive $667K in MIV® across 57 total placements online and on Instagram and Twitter. The campaign has been featured online by the likes of BoF, WWD, Vogue Arabia among others top publications resulting in a global grand campaign reach of 123 million. The United Arab Emirates region represented the top location in MIV® for the campaign acting for $26.5K across 19 placements, followed by Saudi Arabia representing $15.3K in MIV®. This is a nod to the importance of perfumes to the Arab consumer. Ranked in the 3rd, 4th and 5th position in the top market for the campaign were the United States, United Kingdom and Italy respectively.

A deep dive into the analysis of the campaign

In Karen’s Instagram announcement post about the collaboration, which amassed $220K in MIV® alone, she stated ‘This is such a dream for an Arab girl from Lebanon to be the global spokesperson for such an iconic brand… thank you to the most amazing team for this opportunity and for an unforgettable experience.’ The campaign was not only an achievement for Karen but also for Roberto Cavalli. As Beatrice Puglisi (global marketing director for Roberto Cavalli Fragrances at Coty) stated in an article in WWD: 'The objective of this campaign is to build a stronger relationship with our consumers, to communicate and develop a more emotional link between the brand and our consumers'. Choosing Wazen, whose core audience are women between the ages of 18 to 34, as the global face of the brand, also helps Cavalli attract a similar youthful audience. As we can see in our analysis, Karen was able to accumulate over 273.7K likes, 2267 comments and generate an impressive $606K in MIV®, accounting for 90.86% of the total Media Impact Value™ of the campaign, across only 3 posts. This confirms that the campaign resonated outstandingly well with Karen’s audience and drove a high engagement rate. 

When we look at the channel split in our analysis, we note that the online media channel accounted for 41 placements in total which represented 71.9% of the total campaign coverage. In our ranking, the top supporting source was Vogue Arabia which represented 11 placements and accounted for $9.82K in MIV® followed by Buro 24/7’s article which generated $8.41K in MIV®. Additionally, out of the global Media Impact Value™ generated by the campaign, 92% came from Instagram while 8% came from the online media coverage. This shows that social media remains a primary medium not only for influencers but also for brands to reach a younger audience. 

As a result, leveraging the right Voice, Karen, with the right approach, Roberto Cavalli Perfume campaign, for the right audience, Karen's following, was a successful strategy for both the brand and the creator.

We hope you enjoyed this instalment of #KnowYourMIV where we analyzed the data behind Karen Wazen and Roberto Cavalli campaign. If you want to explore more about how to engage the right influencers on TikTok, read our report 'TikTok's Takeover: The Power of Creators in 2021!

TikTok’s Takeover: The Power of Creators in 2021

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