With today’s industry innovations, most health and beauty products pop off the shelves by way of novel ingredients, proven claims, eye-catching packaging, consumer loyalty or reputation on social media. However, there are marketing and advertising firms that capture all of these benefits and more and parlay the assets into content to promote brands across a variety of mediums.

Plus—a NYC-based creative agency that creates content for heavy hitters such as Kiehl’s, MAC Cosmetics, Nike, AMC and Starwood Hotels—presented at HBA Global Expo at the Jacob Javits Center on June 9 on how beauty brands use films and social media to reach new customers. According to Jeremy Hollister, co-founder and executive creative director, and Amy Hollis, account and marketing executive, Plus helps top brands create meaningful connections with consumers. Their hybrid model of creative agency and production company helps forge vibrant partnerships.

For example, for MAC Cosmetics, the company believes “it’s nice to be pretty, but it’s so much more interesting to create a persona.” In over nine years, Plus has worked with this cosmetics innovator to develop the brand’s unique vision through story-led campaigns, brand films and mobile extensions.

With the launch of MAC’s Spring Colour Forecast collection, Plus created an “audiovisual kaleidoscope that invokes an emotional response to color.” In the Viva Glam Campaign, Plus brought MAC together with fans of Lady Gaga for a story experience that raised awareness and support for MAC’s AIDS Fund.

For six months, Plus shared Nicola Formichetti’s (fashion director of the Haus of Gaga) creative process as he engaged fans in the creation of The Masterpiece, a special video for MAC Viva Glam. Through an online crowd sourced initiative, fans became a part of his process and ultimately a part of the wearable piece of art that Gaga launched during fashion week.

In partnership with Kiehl’s and National Geographic, Plus created a social media campaign to raise awareness around the Cross Terrain skin care collection. The Facebook experience featured an adventure docu-series, a heritage timeline and a contest. The content was seeded across the web, quadrupling online conversations and increasing the Facebook fanbase by 16%. With a unique blend of ingredients and method by which they’re combined, there’s an adventure story behind each Kiehl’s product. Taking advantage of this insight, Plus developed a new way of telling product stories through video and animation.

Kiehl’s also promotes its philanthropy. Its mission is “to improve in some way the quality of the community… making for better citizens, better firms and better communities.” Through the creation of a video series, Plus helped Kiehl’s tell the story of their philanthropic efforts within local communities involved in the Kiehl’s supply chain.

“We like to be in many places as possible, as Millennials are  everywhere,” Hollis told Happi.com in an interview. “It shows the brand in thoughtful of the consumer.” She cited placement on popular website Refinery29.com as an example.

“From a marketing standpoint, it is crucial to help shoppers make decisions on their purchases,” Hollister added. “Consumers are deciding all the time—on mobiles, newsfeeds—it’s part of the consumer journey. Brands just want to be everywhere.”

In their HBA Global Expo presentation, Hollis and Hollister noted that consumers are seeking different benefits at the pre-purchasing stage than during and after purchase as the path is no longer linear, discovery can happen at anytime and decision making is crowd-sourced.

So, how can marketers be there at the critical moment? According to Hollis and Hollister, by surrounding consumers with branded content and letting them self-select how to interact with your brand. A prime way is via video, as 98% of 18-34 year olds watch video on their mobile everyday. And, time spent watching video is increasing by 50% each year; with 70% of users watching a video of a product visit the brand site.

Ultimately, the content eco-system helps match marketing strategy with the right content or message the right customer at the fright phase in the buying journey.

“There’s a real synergy in it,” said Hollister.