Skincare as social currency in the age of Instagram

Beauty billboards have a brand-new definition. Once pinned across several OOH formats, beauty visibility now finds its most effective surface on the consumer’s face itself. 

A branded eye patch on a model’s face once belonged to billboards. Today, the same image gains more traction when it appears, unprompted, in an Instagram selfie.  Instagram skincare sits at the centre of this shift, where everyday use generates repeated exposure. Social media has relocated marketing, turning visibility into persuasion. Branded beauty supplies have become key drivers of what are now consumer-led marketing campaigns. 

Once restricted to personal self-care rituals, eye patches, LED masks, and sheet masks—with brand names etched all over them—have now become lifestyle products. They’re making special appearances in photo dumps on Instagram feeds all the time. “Social media doesn’t just make these products look ‘cool’; it turns them into part of a larger lifestyle narrative that people want to be seen as part of,” says Mini Sood Banerjee, head of marketing at Amorepacific India. A consumer is now convincing many others to shop (or drop) a product. 

Instagram skincare and the rise of monogrammed beauty 

Louis Vuitton and Givenchy toiletry bags are passé; eye patches embossed with logos of Dior, Chanel, Rhode, and Dieux, pimple patches sporting quirky brand-coded elements such as Starface, sheet masks associated with names like  Biodance, 111Skin, and Augustinus Bader have become beauty’s new aesthetic capital. Face patches and leave-on LED Masks now operate as visible markers of taste, designed to be recognised as much as they are to be used. 

In India, beauty brands including d’you, indē wild, Gush Beauty, Quench Beauty, Justhuman, Clay Co, Purearth, and thou have adopted this logic, translating skincare into objects that circulate easily on social media. 

Beauty has historically maintained a restrained relationship with logomania. Logos appeared on powder pans, lipstick bullets, and outer packaging, functioning as quiet signifiers rather than statements that took the limelight. Today, they operate as flex symbols, built for visibility. 

The rise of monogrammed beauty isn’t sudden but cyclical, argues beauty editor and founder of Dubai-based beauty marketplace NOUR, Nidhi Sharma, except at a much larger scale and accelerated speed. “In the 1990s, Chanel compacts and YSL lipsticks sat on desks as accessories. Today, social media has turned beauty products into content props. A Dior lip oil isn’t just skincare anymore, it’s a supporting character in ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos.” 

“SOCIAL MEDIA DOESN’T JUST MAKE THESE PRODUCTS LOOK ‘COOL’; IT TURNS THEM INTO PART OF A LARGER LIFESTYLE NARRATIVE THAT PEOPLE WANT TO BE SEEN AS PART OF” –– Mini Sood Banerjee

This shift mirrors how beauty’s focus has moved  from “result” to “ritual”, and from “ritual” to “content”, says angel investor Harnidh Kaur. “Once skincare becomes something you do in public-facing contexts (before meetings, on flights, in the office bathroom, or on camera) the product isn’t just a tool anymore, it’s a prop, and props have to be read and contextualised quickly.” 

Why visibility now drives skincare value

A survey conducted by US-based beauty marketplace Ulta Beauty revealed that 34 per cent of consumers believe their beauty routines are a form of their self-expression, while over half (52 per cent) of Gen Z consumers use beauty products that help them “showcase different aspects of their personal identity and styles.”

The widespread popularity of monogrammed beauty products may reflect curated performance at first, but a closer examination reveals a growing need to bridge the gaps between aspiration and accessibility. Recognisability is another reward monogrammed beauty products proffer by default. “The algorithm rewards engagement, and recognisable products are engagement bait,” says Sharma. 

How visibility became the currency of cool

Beauty has quietly adopted fashion’s logic. Like a luxury handbag, a monogrammed eye patch now signals taste before function. When social media labels  something as “cool”, translating that perception into sales becomes frictionless. The global under-eye patches market— valued at $817.8 million in 2025—is  expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2035. 

“THE ALGORITHM REWARDS ENGAGEMENT, AND RECOGNISABLE PRODUCTS ARE ENGAGEMENT BAIT” –– Nidhi Sharma 

Optics hold power. Visibility, on repeat, doesn’t just make a product seem highly sought-after, but also highly quality- and value-driven. “Recognisability works faster than performance in digital culture because it’s instantly legible,” says Barkha Surana, an anthropologist and strategic researcher on consumer behaviour. “You don’t need to know if something works, you just need to recognise it in order to be associated with it and be seen as cool. But cool isn’t a proxy for efficacy. Performance isn’t essentially irrelevant, but often deferred. The product earns attention first, and efficacy is evaluated later.” 

This holds especially true in skincare, notes Netijyata Mahendru, founder of Broadcast Beauty, an end-to-end beauty incubation boutique. “Monogrammed beauty products are mostly seen in the skincare space. This is the industry’s attempt to gain visibility in a category which is not always visible.” 

 “What is new is the focus on Instagrammability,” says Sharma. “The product has to work, look good, and photograph well.” 

Kaur adds that recognisability now functions as a shortcut for trust. “Familiarity becomes a stand-in for evaluation. If you’ve seen something enough times, especially in aspirational settings, you register it as vetted, even when you haven’t actually seen anyone explain why it works.”

When omnipresence sets in, FOMO follows. Lifestyle creator Gayathri Mohan attributes many monogrammed beauty purchases to this  pressure. “As consumers, I don’t think we’re asking the right questions before buying such products. Instead of ‘Do I need this?’ we’re now mostly thinking of ‘Oh, it will be cool for a post or Reel on Instagram.’” 

This creates an environment of normalised aspiration, notes Surana. “When everyone appears to be using the same products, opting out starts to feel like falling behind culturally, not just aesthetically. The pressure is subtle, continuous, and algorithmically reinforced.”

A win-win for beauty brands, at the cost of consumers?

The beauty industry’s rapid growth has incentivised constant conversion. Earned consumers now produce marketing content brands once paid teams to create. 

Consumers face financial burnout, mental load, and overconsumption. The shift from serums to lip balms to monogrammed beauty products follows a familiar arc.  In this category, most beauty products are single-use, amplifying long-term cost. 

“Beauty right now is fundamentally unsustainable, both environmentally and strategically,” says Sharma. “Brands are chasing 90-day wins instead of 10-year equity. In this climate, the whole game involves creating a hype brand, selling fast, and exiting. Nobody’s chasing longevity because the landscape changes every couple of years. How many products sit half-used in bathrooms because the next viral thing dropped? The industry has created this monster.”

The consequences aren’t limited to brand equity alone. They extend into how consumption itself is experienced and justified. Single-use products create “usage moments” that can be shown repeatedly, without requiring consumers to confront the fact that they’re buying the same function again and again, says Kaur. “What makes this tricky is that the overconsumption isn’t always experienced as overconsumption. It’s experienced as a small daily upgrade, or a harmless add-on, or a treat. But scaled across millions of people, it’s a huge amount of material throughput for products that often don’t meaningfully change outcomes compared to reusable alternatives. The marketing upside is obvious; the societal downside is simply externalised, which is the pattern we’ve seen across a lot of consumer categories that become content-native.”

Why hype-driven skincare struggles long-term 

The demand for hype-driven monogrammed beauty products presents a structural risk for brands. When equity is built around a single viral product, identity narrows quickly. “We’re already seeing it. Summer Fridays is the lip balm brand. CosRx is the snail mucin brand. When your entire equity is built on one viral SKU, you’re vulnerable. What happens when the algorithm moves on? When someone dupes it?,” says Sharma.

As a result, what brands optimise for has become very specific. “Performance still matters, but it doesn’t have to be exceptional to win the first purchase, because that is being driven by social proof and visual association more than by proof of efficacy,” says Kaur. 

Trend-led acquisition weakens loyalty, notes Surana. When consumers enter through visibility rather than belief, attachment remains shallow and easily displaced.

For brands, monogrammed products still create frequent touchpoints.They are easy to repurchase, highly visible, and naturally social-first, begins Sood Banerjee. “. “When ‘aesthetic’ outweighs efficacy, consumers risk paying for novelty rather than value. The real win is when brands balance desirability with responsibility, offering products that are trend-aware but still backed by science, transparency, and genuine skin benefits.”

Repeat purchase remains the only durable success metric in skincare, points out Mahendru.“The brands that win long-term are the ones that can do both: use aesthetics to earn attention without letting aesthetics become the whole value proposition,” adds Kaur. “In a culture where everything is optimised to be seen, the real premium becomes trust, and specifically trust that is earned slowly, not launched.”