Kiko nearly matches Charlotte Tilbury with fewer creators

Kiko Milano nearly matched Charlotte Tilbury in a new UK beauty influencer marketing ranking, despite working with far fewer creators.

Analysis by Kolsquare showed Kiko achieved almost the same result with a much smaller creator roster.

Maybelline topped the ranking with Earned Media Value of GBP £3,451,247. Charlotte Tilbury placed second with GBP £2,789,041, while Kiko ranked third on GBP £2,671,435.

Kiko's performance stood out because it worked with 298 creators, compared with 1,221 for Charlotte Tilbury. That 76% gap was accompanied by a much higher engagement rate for Kiko, at 17.3%, versus 2.5% for Charlotte Tilbury.

The figures point to a shift in how beauty brands approach influencer marketing on Instagram. Rather than relying on the largest possible creator rosters, several brands in the ranking appeared to achieve stronger results through more selective partnerships.

Space NK and L'Oréal Paris completed the top five. The broader table also highlighted lower-ranked brands that posted strong engagement rates despite using smaller creator groups.

Refy Beauty, which ranked tenth overall, recorded a 14.4% engagement rate. Armani Beauty reached 15.5%, again while working with fewer creators than many brands above it.

Bellami surge

Bellami Hair provided one of the clearest examples of that pattern. The hair brand generated more than GBP £718,522 in Earned Media Value from just five creators and posted a 30.8% engagement rate, the highest among the leading brands covered by the analysis.

That performance lifted Bellami Hair 342 places to 34th in the ranking. Marc Jacobs Beauty climbed 298 places, Unicorn Cosmetics rose 254 places, Spectrum Collections gained 183 places, St. Tropez moved up 169 places and Yepoda advanced 96 places.

Alicia Van Der Meer, UK marketing manager at Kolsquare, commented on the broader trend in the latest figures.

"For years, influencer marketing has often been treated as a numbers game, with brands believing the more creators they worked with, the greater the impact. These rankings suggest that approach is changing.

"The brands seeing the strongest results are becoming much more strategic about who they partner with. Relevance, authenticity and audience engagement are increasingly proving more valuable than simply recruiting the biggest creator network.

"Consumers are becoming increasingly selective about the creators they trust. Brands that invest time in finding creators with highly engaged, loyal communities are often generating better commercial outcomes than those simply chasing reach," Van Der Meer said.

Mixed fortunes

Not all brands moved in the same direction. Milk Makeup fell 57 places, while Olaplex, Benefit Cosmetics, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Lancôme also dropped in the standings.

The ranking suggests beauty brands face a crowded, fast-moving social media market, where performance can shift quickly as attention moves between creators and campaigns.

The study was based on 92,991 Instagram posts published by 47,675 creators mentioning more than 2,400 beauty brands over one month.

Earned Media Value estimates the value generated through influencer engagement and is commonly used by brands to compare creator marketing performance across campaigns and competitors.

Kiko's rise was one of the biggest among the leading brands, with the Italian cosmetics group climbing 12 places while almost drawing level with a rival that used more than four times as many creators.