Rhode’s influencer-fueled rise: how Hailey Bieber’s beauty disruptor is staking a position in Europe

Rhode’s data-driven influencer strategy shows how a micro-first playbook and bold product drops are driving the brand’s growth in Europe’s competitive skincare market.

Mouth with lip gloss

When Hailey Bieber launched Rhode in June 2022, it had the hallmarks of a celebrity brand—but quickly proved far more. Positioned as accessible prestige for Gen Z and millennials, its minimalist, glazed-skin aesthetic was practically made for TikTok virality. By entering Europe in September 2023, Rhode stepped into a €30 billion skincare arena dominated by industry titans.

In just two years, the upstart American brand has carved out a chunky slice of the pie. Kolsquare’s latest beauty industry rankings reveal a meteoric rise, having climbed 27 and 62 positions on Instagram and TikTok respectively from 2024 to 2025. Rhode is now the #17 beauty brand in Europe on both platforms, and holds the #2 position in the skincare category on Instagram, and #6 in skincare on TikTok.

In this article, we dissect Rhode’s European influencer marketing strategy with the help of Kolsquare’s Key Metrics functionality. The analysis takes into account all @rhode mentions on Instagram and TikTok KOLs with over 30% audience reach in nine European markets (FR, DE, IT, ES, GB, BE, NL, DK, SE), from July 2023 to June 2025, offering a YoY analysis 2023/2024 to 2024/2025.

Key takeaways

From celebrity launch to challenger brand: In just two years, Rhode has gone from Hailey Bieber’s “glazed skin” start-up to a top-20 beauty brand in Europe, climbing 27 places on Instagram and 62 on TikTok in Kolsquare’s rankings.
Influence as infrastructure: Rhode treats influencer marketing not as a tactic but as its operating system, powering both launches and always-on visibility.
Micro-first, macro-smart: With over 60% of activations led by micro creators, Rhode builds authenticity at scale, then layers macro/mega bursts to amplify impact.
Product drops as cultural detonators: Launches like Pocket Blush (+346% IG EMV, +3,755% TT EMV) and the Peppermint Glaze holiday drop (+7,000% TT EMV) show how Rhode transforms new products into cultural events that dominate feeds long after launch.

‍Rhode: offering a masterclass in scaling a brand with micro-influence

An instinctive play, Rhode dove into influencer marketing to drive awareness, cultural relevance, and trust in a beauty landscape crowded with global and local players. The brand’s first European activations centred on Rhode’s core identity—“glazed skin” aesthetics and the viral Lip Treatments—supported by a handful of high-visibility creators and pop-ups.

Those early Instagram campaigns set a baseline of activity: during the 2023/24 period, Instagram drove just over €1.5m EMV from 267 posts. Taking a classic test-and-learn approach, the brand held back on TikTok during this piece, with just 11 pieces of content.

The 2024/2025 data reveals just how dramatically Rhode has scaled its influence strategy in core European markets. Content volume on Instagram surged to 1,664 posts (↑523% YoY), with estimated views climbing to 57.5m (↑171%), and EMV more than doubling to £3.41m (↑128%).

Rhode’s scaling strategy was force of nature: harnessing micro-influencers for authenticity and cultural pull. Kolsquare data shows that in 2024/2025, 62% of Instagram activations and 65% of TikTok’s @rhode mentions were by micro creators. Macros and megas added strategic bursts, but micro-led volume powered mass resonance.

KOLs that mentioned Rhode during the analysis period (Source: Kolsquare)

This strategy fueled meteoric results: Instagram mentions surged from 267 to 1,664 posts (↑523%), views jumped to 57.5 million (↑171%), EMV doubled to €3.93 million (↑128%), while engagement rose from 13.7% to 17.1% (even as EMV per post dipped −63%).

On TikTok, mentions skyrocketed from 11 to 485 (↑4,309%), views soared to 29.4 million (↑15,951%), and EMV leapt to €2.37 million (↑60,609%), with EMV/post +1,277% and views/post +164% improving efficiency.

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Leveraging product drops into viral moments

Rhode employed a playbook that intertwined influence with product launches to deliver seasonal spikes and support the business, while operating an always-on strategy to drive awareness throughout the year. Each launch became a cultural moment, fueling UGC waves long after launch and reinforcing Rhode’s launch-first influence strategy.

Each new product drop — from Pocket Blush in June 2024, which pushed Instagram EMV up +346% YoY and TikTok EMV +3,755%, to the Peppermint Glaze holiday drop in December 2024, which sent TikTok EMV soaring +7,000% YoY — was treated as a cultural event. These launches were seeded with high-profile names like @palomaelsesser and @alexconsani, then amplified by waves of micro-influencers, who accounted for 62% of Instagram mentions and 65% of TikTok mentions in 2024/25.

This dual-layer strategy explains Rhode’s ability to drive both spikes and sustained presence. The big bursts generated millions of incremental views — Instagram reached 57.5M views in 2024/2025 (+171% YoY), while TikTok hit 29.4M views in 2024/2025 (+15,951% YoY).

Rhode’s staying power lies with its always-on layer of brand ambassadors, with roughly 50% creator retention YoY. This balance between returning advocates and new recruits ensures Rhode remains ever-present in European feeds. The result is a brand that doesn’t fade between launches, but maintains cultural momentum with steady mentions, GRWMs, and trend tie-ins.

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From pop-ups to powerhouse: Rhode’s blueprint for scaling influence

Rhode’s European rise has been powered as much by smart business manoeuvres as by cultural momentum. The brand’s September 2023 entry into France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Ireland, punctuated by buzzy pop-ups in London and Paris, generated early PR buzz and gave influencers a stage to amplify the brand. These moments weren’t simply launch parties — they were designed as cultural touchpoints, laying the groundwork for the waves of creator activity that followed.

The real inflection point came in May 2025, when Rhode was acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in a $1 billion deal. The acquisition didn’t just validate Rhode’s disruptor credentials — it unlocked distribution muscle, including planned Sephora placements across the UK and Europe, setting the stage for a new phase of growth.

Underpinning this expansion is Rhode’s strategic architecture of influence. Micro-influencers provide the breadth that builds cultural gravity. Macro and mega creators are deployed surgically to spike visibility around launches.

Creator retention, hovering around 50% YoY, ensures the brand balances loyalty with novelty. And the dual-platform strategy — Instagram as the steady reach backbone, TikTok as the viral accelerator — delivers consistency and explosive bursts in tandem.

This approach is more than influencer marketing; it is Rhode’s operating system. While legacy beauty houses funnel budgets into print and TV, Rhode has proven that seasonal launches fuelled by creator-led amplification and supported by smart PR and expansion plays can rewrite the growth curve. What began in 2022 as Hailey Bieber’s personal project has, in under three years, become a European top-20 beauty brand and a genuine challenger to the continent’s most entrenched players.

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Learning from Rhode’s success … and what we expect they will do next

Rhode’s rise in Europe is more than a case study in celebrity-backed success — it’s a blueprint for how influence, when treated as strategic infrastructure, can disrupt even the most entrenched markets. The lessons are clear.

On Instagram, Rhode has shown the power of micro-influencer grids as the backbone of scale, but the next chapter will demand balance: keep >60% of activations micro to preserve reach and authenticity, while re-introducing targeted macro and mega spikes around marquee European moments like Fashion Weeks or retail rollouts to lift EMV/post back to higher efficiency.

Planning around two annual peaks — summer launches (Jun–Aug UGC swells) and holiday gifting (Dec–Feb resets) — will give Rhode recurring cultural crescendos. At the same time, tracking creator retention cohorts against sell-through will sharpen the ability to bring back advocates who drive not just content, but conversions.

On TikTok, Rhode’s future edge lies in doubling down on original content briefs for micro and macro creators. The algorithm rewards OG posts and smaller voices; providing storyline prompts like GRWM formats, phone case hacks, or multi-shade blush routines, and packaging them in series formats, will keep Rhode in the algorithm’s favour.

Ahead of further EU retail expansions, the brand should recruit local bilingual creators in markets like the Nordics, Netherlands, Austria, Greece, and Poland, using geo-tagged content and integrating commerce features where TikTok Shop is live.

Cross-platform, Rhode has perfected the product-launch spike; the next step is refining timing. Content sprints tied to product moments, seeded at T-14, T-7, and T+7, will ensure UGC peaks align with paid campaigns and PR waves, maximising cultural impact.

The learning for every beauty brand is simple: influence is no longer about one-off campaigns and vanity metrics — it’s about building an operating system. Rhode has shown how a challenger brand can use micro authenticity, macro spectacle, and product cadence to take on Europe’s giants. Those who treat influence as peripheral risk being outpaced. Those who treat it as their backbone, as Rhode has, will be in the running to lead the next era of beauty.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.

Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.

With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.

As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.

Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.