How Brands Are Getting Reddit Marketing Right

For its latest launch, Italian skincare brand Borghese wanted to create a product that addressed shoppers’ most commonly-held skincare concerns.

To determine what exactly those were, it looked to Reddit, the community forum platform that hosts discussions about everything from film to footwear. After staffers crawled through posts on the “skincare addiction” subreddits for various global markets, from the US to the UK and Italy, they came to the conclusion that it was adult acne that consumers were agonising over most.

The brand hadn’t released a product solely dedicated to acne before, and some of the leadership team felt it could be “confusing,” said chief operating officer Dawn Hilarczyk, given that Borghese’s hero category is face masks. But the Reddit conversation “sealed the deal.” Now, the brand is planning a limited-time product drop designed specifically to address the acne concerns Redditors were discussing. As well, Borghese will roll out product-specific marketing for its Fango clay mask after noticing that it was its most frequently discussed product on the platform.

Long a favourite place for internet users looking to crowdsource recommendations and vent anonymously, lately, Reddit has emerged as a consumer insights gold mine. Companies as varied as retailer Urban Outfitters and skincare label Cerave have used it to better understand their customers, inform product development and shape marketing decisions both on and off the platform. With its clearly defined communities, or subreddits — which can be as specific as those shopping exclusively for petite fashion or seeking eye makeup tips for hooded eyes — Reddit can help simplify marketers’ task of zeroing in on conversations among specific customer subsets.

But Reddit isn’t just an insights tool. While marketers may be wary of running ads on what feels like a community-centric safe space, it is a “highly commercial environment,” said Lore Oxford, global insights principal at Reddit. Seventy-one percent of surveyed users visit Reddit to validate a purchase before buying. Reddit’s own advertising and insights tools are growing as well — in May, the platform released a dynamic product ads capability, and also launched Reddit Community Intelligence, a suite of tools that allow brands to more easily gather insights from Reddit conversations, at creative communications festival Cannes Lions in June.

People flock to Reddit because the conversations there are human, versus Google search results that are optimised for SEO rather than different communities’ needs. As the search landscape becomes increasingly muddled by sponsored content, bot reviews and AI-generated responses — many of which incorporate Reddit responses — the community-driven commentary that make up the Reddit landscape “provides a distinctly human voice,” said Oxford.

To avoid bombarding users with advertising messaging that feels out of place, brand-led content needs to fit Reddit’s creative, conversational style, incorporating platform-native acronyms and visuals that highlight product details and functionality.

“We want to be part of the community, versus it feel like we are a brand coming into a space we do not necessarily belong in,” said Cyntia Leo, head of marketing at Urban Outfitters, which currently uses the platform for insights rather than advertising. “It’s less about disrupting the conversation, but really being part of [it].”

A Consumer Insights Gold Mine

Analysing Reddit chatter — whether manually, through external social media scraping technology or using the platform’s own social listening tools like its recently launched Reddit Insights — can help provide a temperature check on consumer sentiment around a brand. Urban Outfitters, for example, manually tracks conversations across subreddits around topics like fashion, design and music. It’s used those insights in product decisions, such as determining the best vinyl records to stock for its Singles Day event, or deciding to bring back an exclusive colourway of the Owala water bottle after seeing consumers asking for a restock. Before the product arrived back in stock, the company teased its return on Reddit, too.

“It’s a bit of an unfiltered focus group,” said Leo.

The platform can also help brands determine the type of language they should be using to speak to their customer base. Borghese, for instance, decided to simplify its messaging after observing the tone on the r/SkincareAddiction subreddit, said Hilarczyk.

“[Reddit] takes the marketing speak out of it,” she said.

For some brands, insights gleaned from the platform have helped to spark entire campaigns. Comments across social media platforms including Reddit, wondering why Cerave had never used actor Michael Cera in its advertising, inspired the creative behind the brand’s 2024 Super Bowl commercial, which featured Cera as its “founder.”

While a beloved brand on Reddit for the most part, Cerave, like all companies, has to deal with the occasional negative comment too. But the brand also uses these to help guide its decision-making. For consumers who have been dissatisfied with acne products, for instance, “that’s a perfect opportunity for us” to optimise product description pages or online education around how long consumers should use products before seeing results, said Jasteena Gill, senior vice president of US marketing for Cerave.

When Reddit users turn on a brand, however, they risk falling prey to an onslaught of negative comments on everything from fit to price. Apparel label Madewell, for instance, has been met with Reddit threads with headlines like “Does anyone here even like Madewell anymore?” and “What on earth is this look? Seriously.”

“It’s a slippery slope,” said Borghese’s Hilarczyk. “It could destroy a brand.”

Reddit insights are, of course, also key guideposts for showing brands how to operate on the platform itself, especially when determining the communities they should show up in. New Balance, for instance, looked into the top Reddit communities where its brand name was surfacing, and found many long-distance runners discussing its shoes. The insight sparked the idea for a running-focused campaign, which the brand shared not only on the New Balance subreddit, but discussion pages for marathon runners, too.

Advertising in a Community Safe Space

Observing the conversation on Reddit is one thing, tapping into it is another. For brands looking to do so, the biggest challenge is building a presence on Reddit without disrupting the community feel of the platform.

Users are more likely to be receptive, for instance, to relevant branded content in places where they’re already seeking out related information. Ulta Beauty promoted a post about its official beauty partnership with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour above the comments section on a thread asking where to find affordable makeup brushes.

To find the right consumers on the platform, marketers can advertise to people who have previously visited their brand’s subreddit. They can also target by keyword to get in front of users they might not have otherwise interfaced with, like travel communities discussing how to pack their skincare routines for flights, or athletes seeking out sweatproof makeup.

Embracing a tone that feels tailored to the platform also goes a long way. Cerave leaned into a classic Reddit format, recently hosting an “Ask Me Anything” thread with dermatologist Dr. Kunal Malik to combine the human touch Redditors love with the brand’s expertise, providing answers to their skin-related questions.

The reception was overwhelmingly positive: “I exclusively use Cerave for my face wash. The only thing that doesn’t make my skin feel dry and lifeless,” said one user. “What goes into the face wash/cleansers that make it work so well? Are there any other products that you recommend to keep my face [moisturized]?”

While many believe Reddit to be a platform where text is best, some communities, such as those demonstrating makeup looks, skin texture or outfit ideas by body shape, rely heavily on imagery. Ads can benefit from leaning into visuals as well, as long as they are accompanied by a Reddit-friendly headline. In recent ads, Ulta Beauty, for example, included catalogue imagery that was automatically generated based on the most relevant conversations paired with taglines like “It’s an *add to bag* kind of day/week/month/year” — which drove a 66 percent higher return on ad spend than the previous year, according to a Reddit case study.

Leaning into the crowdsourced opinions native to the platform, brands can also supplement their ads with AI-created summaries of positive user conversations about a given product. Korean skincare brand Dr. Jart used the tool to append an ad with an overview of customer commentary about its products’ calming and colour-correcting effects.

It’s the brands that can deliver the information consumers are already seeking out without “pretending to be something else,” said Oxford, that are the most likely to connect.

“This is branded content. However, we have something to offer you, and we have value to add to the community,” she said.