Cosmetics brand Bare Escentuals is promoting natural beauty through its first major multichannel campaign that includes mobile bar codes as part of its effort to reach a wider audience.

The goal of the "Be a Force of Beauty" campaign is to empower women through beauty. The campaign involves print, television and digital elements.

?We realized that there is an audience that we aren?t reaching with our brand, so we turned to traditional advertising? said Simon Cowell, chief marketing of Bare Escentuals, San Francisco.

Bare Escentuals is a cosmetics and skincare brand that is available in 31 countries and has more than 6,000 points of distribution.

Picture perfect
The campaign celebrates the power of beauty by believing that beauty is more than just skin-deep.

?This campaign is meant to prove that beautiful women are doing something with their lives to create change,? Mr. Cowell said. ?Pretty is what you are, but beauty is what you do with it.?

The print ads feature five women who all were blindly chosen at model casting calls based on their beliefs that beauty and confidence go hand in hand.

Going along with the theme of beauty, each mobile bar code is called a beauty mark.

Once scanning the codes, users are taken to specific biographical videos that match the model in the ad, view the beauty look and can be redirected to buy products.

?There are lots of layers to this campaign and it can be hard to get the message across,? Mr. Cowell said.

?QR codes tell a richer story than other mediums,? he said.

The ads are scheduled to be rolled out in twelve magazines in October and November issues.

Additionally, Bare Escentuals plans to roll out mobile ads on applications for the campaign.

Code language
Mobile bar codes are hot in the industry and have skyrocketed lately in popularity with brands wanting to elevate their print materials.

In other beauty-related news, Sephora launched a commerce-enabled iPad app (see story).

?It?s really about making sure we can continue telling stories through our brand and making sure our consumers can interact with us wherever they are," Mr. Cowell said.

?When we decided to start a traditional advertising campaign, we were concerned about how much of our brand and story they were going to take with us,? he said. ?Mobile is a way they can engage deeper with us.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York