How Can Influencer Marketing Build Trust for Skincare Brands? The Lakmé Case Study

Introduction

Walk into any pharmacy in Mumbai and count the sunscreens. Twenty brands, all promising SPF 50, all printed with the same confident numbers on the tube. Your customer has stopped believing in the tube.

That was the situation when Lakmé launched its SPF 50+ PA++++ Liquid Fluid Sunscreen in India in 2024. The product had real research behind it, but every competitor said the same thing, so saying it louder wouldn't have moved anyone.

BloomX built the campaign around a different idea: Stop making claims and start showing proof, in public, with people the audience already trusts. It ended with 20 lakh+ impressions, 4X follower growth, over 1.5 lakh people engaged through podcasts, and a 6.5% average engagement rate. Here's how it was built.

The Real Problem With Launching Another Sunscreen

The brief had four hard edges, and they shaped everything that followed.

Awareness for the newly launched SPF 50+ sunscreen was low. Lakmé also wanted its advanced R&D testing methods explained in a way that a 24 year old scrolling Instagram would actually sit through. The brand needed to be seen as a credible authority in skincare, particularly among millennials and Gen Z, who research before they buy and screenshot ingredient lists to send to friends.

The fourth edge was the interesting one. Success was defined by engagement and credibility, not direct sales.

That single decision changed the media plan. When sales are the metric, you buy, reach and push discount codes. When trust is the metric, you buy time and attention, so you need formats where a dermatologist can finish a sentence.

Casting for Credibility, Not Reach

Most influencer campaigns pick creators by follower count. This one picked them by what each voice could prove.

Creators including Kamiya Jani, Aashi Adani and Viraj Ghelani carried the relatability. Their content was fun and conversational, built for millennials and Gen Z audiences who scroll past anything that smells like an ad read.

Dermatologist Dr. Jushya Sarin carried the science. When a practising dermatologist validates an SPF claim on camera, the claim stops being a marketing copy and starts being a professional opinion.

Then came the move most brands never make. Lakmé's Head of R&D, Sapna Singh, appeared on camera to walk audiences through the actual testing and research process behind the product.

A brand confident enough to open its lab expects the testing to hold up under questions. That kind of transparency is rare in Indian beauty marketing, and audiences notice rare things.

Why Two Podcasts Beat One Influencer Burst

A 30 second reel can make a claim. It can't test one.

The Curly Tales podcast, featuring Kamiya Jani, Aashi Adani and Dr. Jushya Sarin, ran a live discussion where multiple sunscreen brands were tested side by side. Lakmé SPF 50+ came out as the most reliable in that test. That's a very different asset from a paid post, because the audience watched the comparison happen instead of being told the outcome.

The second podcast solved a different problem. On Moments of Silence, with Viraj Ghelani, Sakshi Shivdasani and Naina Bhan, the conversation moved to who actually wears sunscreen. Viraj talked about men making sunscreen part of a daily routine, which quietly widened the addressable audience for the product.

Sunscreen in India has long been sold as a women's category. One honest conversation did more to break that than a campaign line would have. Across both shows, over 1.5 lakh people engaged with the brand through podcast conversations alone.

The Content and PR Layer That Made It Stick

Podcasts created depth. The rest of the campaign made sure that depth travelled.

The R&D testing process was cut into short, simple formats, so the science reached people who'd never sit through a full episode. Creators wrapped the expert validation inside personal stories, and short form assets were designed to be shared rather than skipped.

PR carried the third party proof. The campaign earned 20+ features across leading beauty and lifestyle publications, and influencer content was repurposed and amplified across channels so one shot fed many placements.

That's the part brands underspend on. A podcast episode has a spike and a tail. A magazine feature keeps showing up in search results for months, long after the campaign budget has closed.

The Numbers That Actually Mattered

Four results tell the story.

The campaign delivered 20 lakh+ total impressions. Follower growth came in at 4X. Podcast conversations alone engaged more than 1.5 lakh people, which means roughly one in every thirteen impressions turned into an actual conversation rather than a scroll. Average engagement rate landed at 6.5%, worth pausing on, because most branded beauty content in India sits somewhere between 1% and 3%.

Read those together and a pattern shows up. The follower jump says people wanted more from the brand after the campaign, not only during it. The engagement rate says the content was worth commenting on rather than scrolling past. That's what credibility looks like in a dashboard.

The Playbook You Can Copy

You don't need Lakmé's budget to use the structure. You need the sequence.

Start by deciding what proof you own: a test result, a founder, a lab, a customer dataset, something a competitor can't copy in a week.

Then pick one format long enough to show that proof. Podcasts work because nobody expects a 45 minute episode to be an ad, and your expert gets room to be specific.

Cast for three jobs rather than one: Someone relatable, someone qualified, someone from inside your business. Skipping the third voice is the most common mistake, and the one that makes campaigns feel hollow.

Finally, treat PR and creator content as one asset library. Every episode should become clips, quotes, carousels and pitches to publications. The campaign that keeps working after launch is the one where a single conversation got cut fifteen ways.

Conclusion

Lakmé didn't win attention for its SPF 50+ sunscreen by shouting a claim. It won by letting a dermatologist, a research head and a room full of creators test that claim in the open. The campaign built awareness and trust together, made skincare a conversation for men and women, and positioned Lakmé SPF 50+ as a science backed sunscreen people can trust for real protection.

If your category is crowded and every competitor sounds identical, your best move isn't a louder claim. It's a public test.

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