WYN Beauty at Ulta Beauty
Serena Williams is a culture-shifter on every court, and beyond. But in a market oversaturated with celebrity-backed brands, even a name as iconic as hers needs more than star power to stand out.
For the debut of WYN Beauty, her new makeup line, Ulta Beauty tapped ONA to craft a launch campaign that would cut through the noise and connect with consumers in a real way. The brief was clear: don’t just announce a brand—build a movement. One rooted in Serena’s legacy, driven by purpose, and designed to WYN big with consumers.
WHAT WE DID
Creative Concepting
CGI
Event Content Capture
Organic Social
Paid Media
LAUNCH
For the launch, we announced the product line’s exclusive availability at Ulta Beauty with a CGI video called “Tennis Court Touch-Up” where automated, oversized hero products painted a tennis court in the middle of the UB parking lot.
STRATEGY & CREATIVE CONCEPT
Since our objectives were to generate brand awareness among beauty enthusiasts and drive traffic to Ulta Beauty (on and offline), our strategy was to establish WYN Beauty as her go-to active-beauty brand, empowering her to confidently achieve her goals, on and off the court.
The creative concept, “Best Performance in the Game,” showcased WYN Beauty’s exceptional performance across the board—from pigmentation, to longevity, to skincare benefits— by spotlighting women of different professions joyfully engaging in active beauty. Through this collaboration, Serena and Ulta Beauty uplifted, encouraged, empowered, and sparked joy for game-changing women, no matter the arena, field, court, boardroom, or beyond. Because high performing women deserve the best in the game—for all the challenges life throws at us and all the WYNS worth celebrating.
The campaign came to life through a three-pronged execution:
CGI Launch Content
We used CGI to craft elevated, visually cohesive storytelling that brought WYN Beauty’s brand world to life. These assets helped introduce the product line with polish and precision—building brand equity, driving discovery, and establishing WYN as a standout within Ulta Beauty’s portfolio.
User-Generated Content
We activated a community of powerful, high-performing women—like Texas' own Coach Carter, astronaut Kellie Gerardi, athletes, doctors, nurses, and even a sports cinematographer—to create organic content rooted in real-life impact. Their voices brought authenticity, relatability, and authority to the campaign, showing that WYN Beauty performs wherever life takes you.
Targeted Seeding
Our “pass-the-plate” strategy centered on joy and generosity—surprising beauty community leaders, and everyday game-changers with curated WYN kits designed to spark sharing, build connection, and generate FOMO.
organic & Paid social
For the launch, we announced the product line’s exclusive availability at Ulta Beauty with a CGI video called “Tennis Court Touch-Up” where automated, oversized hero products painted a tennis court in the middle of the Ulta Beauty parking lot.
From there, we leveraged social challenges and influencer partnerships to create more active-beauty buzz. In “Serena Versus” Serena started a makeup application speed competition with influencers and consumers to start a dialogue between brand founder and fans–along with leveraging Serena’s already engaged following. Then in “Life-Tested” we showed high-performance women across professions wearing WYNBeauty, completing a full workday or big career moment, and showing how the makeup looked before and after. This was a social-forward, storytelling-oriented way to do wear tests that touted product longevity.
We also sent out seeding kits for UGC content like GRWM videos, and we caught up with Serena and astronaut Kellie Gerardi during store hauls filmed for Ulta social channels to draw attention to the in-store experience.
From there, we drove momentum across social with a mix of storytelling, community engagement, and creative challenges:
Life-Tested
A real-world wear test series featuring high-performance women—doctors, athletes, astronauts, and more—showing how WYN holds up through long days and big moments. Before-and-after content proved product longevity with substance and style.
Gift a friend (GRWM)
We seeded curated kits to influential women across industries, prompting them to keep spreading Joy and gift one of the kits to a friend. This sparked a wave of genuine GRWM content, filled with everyday routines, personal stories, friendship, and the spirit of giving.
Serena’s In-Store Hauls
To highlight the Ulta Beauty retail experience, we filmed Serena and astronaut Kellie Gerardi shopping in-store—creating joyful, personality-driven content for Ulta’s social channels that reinforced the brand’s accessibility and energy.
