In my previous post I did extensive research into all of UN DN’s social media accounts and their website. The next step was to do some broader research, looking at how nail polish is promoted on social media in general. I looked on Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. I mainly focused on Instagram because that is the social media platform that I’m targeting my advertisements towards.
Instagram: on Instagram I looked at hashtags, some famous nail polish brands and a specific page that interested me. This range of research gave me a more in depth understanding of how nail polish is advertised, helping to guide my creative decision making.
Hashtags: I looked at loads of different hashtags related to nail polish to explore how it’s presented on Instagram as a whole. The 2 hashtags with the most posts were #nailsofinstagram and #nailpolish. Generally what I found what a consistent style of advertising under these hashtags. For the most part it was a simple, light, clean aesthetic. The photos were taken in strong warm lighting with a really high quality camera to highlight the detail and texture in the nails. Occasionally there would be interesting details in the background but often it was very simple. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this aesthetic, it became very repetitive and boring with all the posts largely conforming to 1 visual identity. In my project work I want to go against this and creative pieces that stand out and contrast this light, clean aesthetic. Some elements I did like was the common use of accessories in the photos such as rings and bracelets, which is something I want to use but make it more striking. Also they’re a lovely array of colours on display but mostly just in the nails, making these colours more bold in the pictures and videos could help make them more interesting. Below are some screenshots from these hashtags:
Nail polish brands: I researched some of the most popular nail polish brands and looked into their Instagram accounts. The brands I’ve shown below are Sally Hansen (404k followers) and Jinsoon (35k followers). The ideas I mentioned about the hashtags remained largely the same across these brands. The aesthetics of the pages are repetitive and predictable with lots of simple shots of painted nails. There’s very little creativity or inspired design work, it largely just follows a formula. Even between different brands the visual identities are similar and not easy to distinguish. This is reflected across the engagement with posts, particularly in the reels. For the most part it’s just steady views that are surprisingly low in comparison to the follower count. The reels tend to be nice relaxing videos of people doing their nails or speaking about them. These make for nice watching but are nothing different or unique which is why they don’t really break out of the brands following.
Sally Hansen X Jared McCain: This post by Sally Hansen in partnership with Jared McCain is one I specifically wanted to talk about. Aesthetically it’s an incredibly simple, it’s just a guy talking on his house with no effects or editing. However, it’s the most viewed reel on their instagram with 1.1 million plays. This is so far ahead of their average. There’s a few interesting things I took from this. It shows the importance of brand collaboration. He is a basketball player so it helped expose the brands to a new audience. This is something UN DN does well with their range of brand ambassadors. Also the post shows the importance of going against the grain. Men wearing nail polish is becoming more popular but is still met with a lot of negativity. This is reflected in the comments section of the post with quite a lot of negative comments but ultimately gets a lot more engagement. The majority of nail polish promotion to targeted towards women with its more feminine aesthetic and I want to challenge this in my work. The idea of nail polish being for men and women is an important part of UN DN and is something that will be key to my project work.
Nails of LA: this is a particular nail polish account that I like. It’s the page of an LA based nail artist who works a lot with celebrities such as Megan Fox, MGK, Landon Barker and Kim Kardashian. They often share posts about UN DN and work with a lot of the same people and have some similar aspects to their visual identities. What I like about this account is the more unique visual identity. I like the use of accessories and a more alternative/ rock leaning aesthetic. These are styles I’d like to work with in my project.
Instagram reflection: overall I found through my research of how nail polish is promoted on Instagram that it was very repetitive and the post became too formulated. It was primarily all just light, clean photos of hands with little creativity or originality. As a result of this there were very few videos or photos that really broke out of the community of followers. I want to go against this in my work, creating a unique aesthetic that stand out from all the other posts on Instagram.
TikTok: Instagram was the main social media platform I researched as it’s where I plan to target my video. But I did do some research into how nail polish is shown on TikTok, mostly just looking at the hashtags. The main one I looked at was. #nailpolish as it had the most posts, 450k. There wasn’t a huge difference from the aesthetic seen on Instagram. The format of the videos are less professional and more conversational which is simply the nature of TikTok. They are once again repetitive and result in relatively low engagement. There was more typography on display but nothing that really stood out to me, it was mostly just simple typefaces with no real characters or uniqueness. The style of the content here isn’t what I’m aiming for in my project.
Visual Research (Pinterest): after researching on Instagram and TikTok I looked on Pinterest to see what content they had related to nail polish. There was a lot of images that followed the same visual identity that was seen on social media. But I was able to find some more unique and creative pieces that inspired me which are below .
I like the more experimental use of colour. Having unnatural colours in the face instantly makes the images more striking. Also there are strong colours in the background so the overall image is eye catching. The poses of the hands are more interesting than a lot of the content of social media. I really like the image with the rip in it. It’s a nice way of playing with colour, having some bits it greyscale and other parts in full colour. This can be seen in the bottom images too as they only have colour on the lips and nails, an easy way to draw attention to the nails. The bottom images have a vintage style with the colours and textures, I’d like to incorporate this into my work as it’s different to the clean images currently seen in do use media.
Samuel Green Illustration 