‘Ugly’ is the ultimate flex: What Virtue’s beauty report means for your next campaign | Analysis | Campaign Asia

There’s a reel from Manila that’s just a girl picking at her hormonal acne in the bathroom mirror, lip-syncing “I woke up like this” to a sped-up Beyoncé track. Comments are a mix of “Same, queen” to the more brutal “skin care recs?” It’s the kind of content that typifies a growing movement on TikTok and Instagram: the messy, the unfiltered, the radically mundane.

Case in point: the rising proliferation of Get Unready With Me (GUWM) videos, where celebrities and creators remove makeup on camera, zoom in on their breakouts and share their night-time routines in real-time, often more honest than polished. And according to Virtue Asia’s new Beauty Breaking Free cultural intelligence report, this cultural correction is chipping away at beauty ideals that have long been rooted in flawlessness, lightness and control.

To unlayer the contradiction, Virtue Asia (Vice Media’s creative agency) identifies three key beauty shifts as part of its report shared exclusively with Campaign Asia-Pacific: the rise of “ugly beauty,” the boom in surreal, fantasy-forward aesthetics, and the rebalancing of power from brands to communities.

The tone of the report is optimistic but grounded. And so are the people behind it.

#Ugly beauty, a trend of owning eyebags, redness, uneven skin texture and visible pores, according to the report, is now a badge of honour in many online spaces. On TikTok alone, it has more than 16 million views. Creators like Maataso, a J-beauty personality who calls herself “the miraculous ugly born in Okayama,” are normalising imperfection in markets where beauty standards still tilt towards porcelain perfection. Others, like Nara Smith, have turned their real-life conditions, eczema and lupus, into full-blown creator communities and ignited trends like beef tallow moisturising and eventually landed brand deals, including one with Cetaphil.

Peter Devito has been pushing for acne normalisation through his photography since 2018, challenging conventions of beauty through wide and diverse casting. 

But does this resonate with brands, too?

“This beauty industry has a long history of pushing flawless skin—it’s an addiction hard to kick,” says Victoria Fernandez, business director at Virtue Asia. “While most brands claim they embrace imperfection, in reality, few have truly unlearned the ideals of perfection they’ve been built on for decades.”

“Unfortunately, we still see the same airbrushed, poreless models when scrolling through social media and e-commerce sites. Realness is still stuck in the space of casting more diversely — in ethnicity, and occasionally age. It’s often just a box-ticking exercise to hop on a clickable trend.”

L:R: Marie Lee, senior strategist and Victoria Fernandez, business director, Virtue Asia

The limits of marketing “realness”

Like most things on the internet, “ugly beauty” can be both radical and not radical at all, especially when the people profiting from it are the same ones who perfected the old rules. Fernandez is clear: a genuine swing in beauty ideals requires more than casting changes and moody campaign filters. “You can’t preach realness without profiting off insecurity. If a brand’s all-time best-seller is a whitening cream, they cannot run a campaign about celebrating diversity in skin tones and expect no one to call them out.”

That disconnect isn’t lost on consumers or creators. While campaigns like Cetaphil’s ‘From Scratch to Soothe’ have resonated for aligning with Nara Smith’s lived experience, they remain the exception, not the norm.

“Beauty imperfection makes for great headlines and campaigns,” says Marie Lee, senior strategist at Virtue, “but brands are not convinced about its ability to drive conversion. Especially in Asia, where traditional beauty standards still dominate, marketers are hesitant to take risks that might cost them market share.”

Escapism over enhancement

Interestingly, the report also points to a second beauty current gaining ground: one that sits at the opposite end of the raw/real spectrum: immersive, fantasy-led beauty. Think anime-inspired brand worlds, maximalist colour palettes, and theatrical “dopamine beauty” aesthetics that offer visual and emotional escape.

And there’s demand for it. 36% of Gen Zs rank fantasy as their favourite genre in 2024, and according to the report, this embrace of dreamlike storytelling with theatrical aesthetics and surreal visuals create playful, immersive environments where beauty becomes a vehicle for experimentation, expression and emotional connection. 

The report reiterates McCann’s ‘Truth About Escapism’ study, which concluded that 44% of APAC consumers want brands to recognise their frustrations, while 56% want to be inspired with dreams. Meanwhile, the UCLA Gen Z Study found that 36% of Gen Zs rank ‘fantasy’ as their favourite genre, suggesting a real appetite for surreal branding that pushes beyond the clinical and functional.

“Gen Z are seeking brands that offer possibility and cultural resonance, not pixel-perfect bottles,” says Lee. “Sensorial, surreal and even chaotic content is winning. The competitive edge now lies in curating a vibe — a space where the brand can invent, claim, and evolve.”

Brands like Sunnies Face and Gala Cammille are already leaning into this shift. They are building immersive universes full of whimsical characters, dreamlike visuals, and emotionally layered narratives that reflect more than just product benefits.

The power is shifting, albeit slowly

More than visual trends, the deeper structural shift happening is in how brands communicate. Where once the narrative was dictated by top-down campaigns and celebrity endorsements, today it’s being shaped by creators, fan communities and micro-influencers and the trust gap is widening.

The market data support this. In Southeast Asia, 46% of consumers trust nano creators, while only 20% say the same about celebrity endorsements, according to Forbes. The credibility of smaller, community-driven voices is clearly rising—and beauty brands that rely on glossy celeb-fronted campaigns may be losing relevance.

“Smaller creators are some of the biggest opportunities in beauty because they’re able to democratise conversation and drive trial quickly,” says Fernandez. “Their authentic reviews cut through the polish of traditional brand channels.”

“But maximising their potential means not shoehorning them into rigid brand scripts,” she adds. “Let them lead within a shared belief system. Real brand voice today means building an ecosystem of voices, not broadcasting a single one.”

It’s a strategy already paying off for brands like Fwee, which launched its Pudding Pot product with no official social content and relied solely on creator calls that drove 68,000 views and 5,000 likes before user-generated content even launched. Or Indonesia beauty brand Wardah, whose Youth Ambassador programme lets young creators shape brand storytelling through missions and workshops, rather than ad briefs.

“The brands that will lead the category,” Lee says, “aren’t the most flawless, or the biggest spenders. They’re the ones that make people feel seen and who aren’t afraid to tell a beauty story that’s raw, weird, or textured.”

Goodbye 60-second spot. Hello storyworld

Finally, the report confronts a harsh truth: 74% of APAC audiences say there are too many ads on social media (Statista/McKinsey). And more than the duration of the films, the problem with this over-saturation is dullness.

“We’re not in a six-second attention economy,” says Fernandez. “We’re in an era of selective attention. Just look at the rise of branded entertainment and the creator economy. Microdramas have become Chinese beauty brands’ go-to solution not only driving recall, but also commerce, directing audiences seamlessly from story to store. [Indonesia’s] Wardah Beauty’s youth ambassador programme leverages what creators know best, that’s engagement and authentic storytelling to produce volumes of content around their brand, not through their owned channels but through everyday creators who create content on engaging everyday experiences.”

“When the content is good and when it moves, resonates, or entertains people binge, people share,” says Lee. “That’s the bar now. Not whether your product benefit was in frame for five seconds.”

So, is beauty finally breaking free? Or is the new script just the old script, but with more hashtags? The answer is probably yes, to both. As Lee puts it, “The brands that will lead and represent the future of the category aren’t the most flawless, nor the ones which spend the most. They are those that create emotional resonance and make consumers feel seen and empowered, and who aren’t afraid to tell a different kind of beauty story, even if it’s a little raw or textured.”

Which is to say: the revolution might be livestreamed, but it’s going to take more than a TikTok trend to make it real.