‘Now, retailers are coming to us’: How RoC Skincare’s retail media strategy has evolved
Several years ago, retail media was barely on RoC Skincare’s radar. Now, it’s a key part of the brand’s playbook to stand out in e-commerce.
E-commerce has shifted from 10% to 50% of the company’s business over the last five years, Sarah Lipski, sales strategy director for RoC Skincare, said at Digiday, Modern Retail and Glossy’s Retail Media Advertising Strategies event in New York City on Sept. 10.
“We do believe that there’s a lot of runway for opportunity here; we’re going to continue to invest in the channels where we see the most growth — this is not going away,” Lipski said. “The business has demanded that we really move here and focus here — in e-commerce and retail media, specifically.”
Lipski said the brand has been focused on Amazon, Walmart and Target, as well as Ulta, which the company ramped up over the last year.
RoC Skincare was created in 1957 by French pharmacist Dr. Jean-Charles Lissarrague, according to Reuters, which reported in 2024 that the brand had been acquired by London investment firm Bridgepoint.
Retail media networks have also become a key growth avenue for the retailers these platforms belong to.
“What’s really interesting to me is that, for years, and for so long, we’ve been going to retailers, and we’re like, selling in our goods, selling the shelf placement, [getting] the next promo, [getting] the next display,” Lipski said. “And now, retailers are coming to us and they’re trying to sell us their retail media, so the tables have turned a little bit.”
Paid search remains a top priority for RoC as the facial skin-care category is increasingly competitive, Lipski said.
“As a smaller, independent derm brand, we really have to make sure that we’re punching above our weight to make sure we’re the most visible we can be on the digital shelf, so we will always go [to paid search] first,” she said.
To maximize the return on its retail media investments, RoC has also explored the growing number of options offered by retailers further up the funnel from paid search. For example, Lipski said the company ran a media campaign through Amazon earlier this year that featured its best-selling eye cream with a full-funnel approach, including paid search, social media campaigns and connected TV.
She said the company found its eye cream sales doubled, and about 30% of the sales spurred by the promotion were actually happening at retailers outside of Amazon. “That’s really important for us, because it’s essentially showing us that Prime Video, Amazon advertising doesn’t necessarily live in a bubble,” she said. “Our overall goal is to try to lift the whole boat.”
The company plans to try out Walmart’s connected TV platform soon, she added.
“The idea was, could we, in theory, go after first-party Walmart shoppers instead of running a national CTV budget? We’ll see what happens,” she said. “We’re literally kicking this thing off next week. We chose to focus on innovation for this, because we’re really trying to drive awareness on a brand new item that is a little bit of a white-space initiative within the skin-care category.”
Lipski said the company is further investing in Walmart advertising, given the steps the big-box retailer has taken to grow the premium beauty category. In March, for example, the big-box retailer announced it had added more than 60 brands to its premium beauty assortment.
“The competition has ramped up fiercely in the space as Walmart looks to compete even more with Amazon,” she said. “As a result of that, we’ve really had to ramp up how we compete in the space, as well.”
Meanwhile, Lipski said, to be reassured that retailers really have RoC Skincare’s target customer in mind, she would like better access to performance metrics and performance data.
“It’s just making sure that there’s a lot of visibility on both ends,” she said. As a hypothetical, she said, “If we give you half a million dollars, what do we get for it?”