The internet loves a good beauty challenge, and the latest to cause a stir is recreating the iconic Bratz Doll look, aka #BratzChallenge. Super talented makeup artists and influencers are showing off their best skills by transforming themselves into Yasmin, Cloe, Jade, and Sasha, complete with huge, glossy lips and amazingly-exaggerated eyes. These are just a few stats from the viral YouTube trend from between January 6, 2019, and February 6, 2019:
- 17.5M YouTube views for #BratzChallenge and related terms were generated on YouTube.
- 17.4M of those views were generated for influencers’ channels.
- Influencer videos around the challenge generated 6.5x the average platform engagement rate.
- 13.3M of those YouTube views are for #BratzChallenge content over 20 minutes long.
- Views of #BratzChallenge YouTube videos between 10-15 minutes are generating 8x the average platform engagement rate.
- Two of the top five most-viewed Bratz makeup challenge videos are in languages other than English.
- The most-viewed #BratzChallenge video uploaded to Instagram has generated 1.3M views and is in Spanish.
#BratzChallenge Videos on YouTube: 17.4M Views in Last 30 Days
Making their debut 18 years ago, Bratz Dolls were sassy, wore impossibly-winged eyeliner, and had glossy pouts for days. Their exaggerated look was perfect then, and is proving perfect now, as male and female makeup influencers hop on the latest trend in beauty and recreate that iconic Bratz Doll profile. From Sasha’s smokey eye to Cloe’s popping lipstick, beauty influencers have taken to YouTube so show off their recreations.
Top gurus like James Charles, NikkieTutorials, and Christen Dominique have taken up the challenge and transformed themselves into their favorite Bratz Doll in front of viewers. NikkieTutorials, an OG YouTube beauty influencer with almost a billion views on the platform, even credited the Bratz Dolls with starting her makeup obsession, stating that when she saw the Bratz challenge was “becoming a thing I was BEYOND excited to transform myself into all that plastic perfection!” Influencers like Charles and Nikki are now inspiring others in the YouTube beauty community to recreate the look and upload their tutorials online. The most viewed #BratzChallenge videos uploaded to YouTube in the last 30 days are:
- Turning Myself Into a Bratz Doll – James Charles – 11M
- Turning Myself into a Bratz Doll! The Bratz Challenge! – NikkieTutorials – 2.1M
- Por Fin Hice El Bratz Challenge! Y Asi Me Quedo – Lauren Sanchez – 447K
- Turning my boyfriend into a bratz doll LOL gone wrong – DESDAMONA – 419K
- BRATZ BEBEĞİNE DÖNÜŞTÜM! BRATZ CHALLENGE – Şeyda Erdoğan – 317K
Makeup artist of the moment, James Charles tops the list with 11M YouTube views. Stay tuned for a future article on how Charles is one of the influencers behind the changing face of online beauty.
YouTube viewers watching #BratzChallenge uploads are also willing to sit through some seriously long-form content as they watch beauty influencers transform themselves. While this type of tutorial typically has the big reveal in the last few seconds of the clip, YouTube viewers are sticking around for over 20 minutes to see what the final outcome looks like.
#BratzChallenge on Instagram
Instagram has a very active beauty community, with many of the top beauty gurus on YouTube also active on the platform. What started as a small Reddit trend was championed by Instagrammer Martin Cantos, and then picked up by thousands of other makeup artists who uploaded clips of themselves as Bratz girls. Even the official BratzGirls instagram account jumped on the trend and encouraged beauty bloggers to share their recreated looks with the #BratzChallenge tag which it then shared. The most-viewed Instagram video of the past 30 days is an upload from Columbian creator Luisa Fernanda W. She has 7.8M followers on Instagram and her Spanish-language upload has generated nearly 1.3M views:
Across YouTube and Instagram, beauty influencers and makeup artists are also giving a shout out to the products they used for their recreations, which is, of course, extra visibility for the cosmetic brands credited with helping achieve the look.
If you’re interested in more beauty tutorials, check out how Vogue is dominating this particular genre on YouTube.