Creative · Campaign · Music Supervision · 2024
Fenty Beauty
The Brief
Bold. Indian. Thirty seconds.
Nykaa briefed us to make a campaign film for Fenty Beauty's India launch. The campaign standing was #myfentyface — their concept being that India's linguistic diversity mirrors what Fenty stands for on skin tone. Copy overlay in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil didn't survive the legal clearance process. What stayed was the tension underneath: how to make something unmistakably Indian without the Indian overpowering a makeup brand that is, first, Fenty.
The Approach
The Indian had to be felt, not stated.
Bold was already Fenty's territory. The red lip, the unguarded colour, the real and raw casting — that came with the brief. The problem was carrying India into a brand with its own strong visual language without Indian styling becoming the subject of the film. The focus still needed to be the makeup.
Control was the answer. Whites for the models. A basic saree drape — present but not costumed. Indian jewellery worn as everyday expression: the mang tikka is a culturally charged piece, but here it reads as a bold personal choice, not a reference. Fenty stayed the subject. India was the context it landed in. The music closed the loop — bold enough to announce arrival, with Indian instrumentation and sampling woven through. To me, that's where the brief fully resolved.
Music Supervision
The track that almost got replaced.
Stock music was the simpler route — cleaner licensing, no conversations to have. Nykaa didn't have a budget for original composition and, at one point, were ready to sign off on a library cue.
I pushed back. Fenty Beauty is Rihanna's brand. The campaign film for her label's India launch needed a track that could carry that weight — music built for the moment, not licensed to it. I pulled in Atteev, my closest collaborator, as a favour. He built the score in his bedroom studio, working after hours through multiple rounds of feedback, with Indian instrumentation woven into a sound that still announced arrival. There was a point Nykaa wanted to revert to stock. The track made the final edit.
Fenty_Final_f_30s edit
Atteev
Since Launch
The film reached 2.9 million. The launch around it didn't hold.
The film went live on Fenty Beauty's official Instagram in collaboration with Nykaa — 2.9M views, 0.44% engagement rate, nearly three times Fenty's FY2024 average of 0.17%.
Nykaa's India launch was underresourced and mismanaged. Fenty cut ties within months and relaunched through Sephora and Tira Beauty. The work didn't get the rollout it deserved. The numbers say the film itself was right.
