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From low visibility to 278M reach: Cosnova’s DPR strategy
As Cosnova expanded beyond Germany, they needed to build visibility, authority, and SEO infrastructure in new markets at the same time. Here's how cross-market Digital PR helped them generate high-quality links and lay the groundwork for long-term international growth.
65%
of coverage linked back to site
83DR
Average Domain Rating achieved in DE
278M
people reached
The Brief
Cosnova came to Kaizen as the parent company behind two distinct beauty brands – Essence and Catrice – with a clear, but complex brief. They were expanding outside of Germany, with the UK becoming an increasingly important market, but their authority outside Germany was limited. Their media coverage in English was very sparse, and there was no strong ecosystem of external links pointing back to their core domain. That gap mattered both for brand awareness and for SEO, particularly given that one of the long-term business goals was to build towards a global website.
The Plan
Cosnova needed high-quality backlinks to support organic, brand presence in a new market, and a strategy that could do both without flattening the differences between their two brands as Essence speaks to a younger, trend-driven consumer. Catrice speaks to a more considered, premium audience. A single campaign approach wouldn’t serve either well.
We built a cross-market Digital PR strategy around two hero campaigns – one per brand – each designed to travel across the UK and Germany while speaking directly to its target audience.
Both campaigns were built with dual objectives from the start: generate linked coverage that would move the needle on SEO, and create stories broad enough to scale across two very different media landscapes. We prioritised high-authority publications throughout, and incorporated reactive trend-led angles alongside the hero campaigns to stay aligned with how beauty is actually covered – seasonally, quickly, and with an eye on what’s already in the cultural conversation.
Spotlight Campaigns
Essence
For Essence, we built a campaign around the most popular and trending makeup looks, using search and social data to surface what people were genuinely engaging with. The format was a natural fit for a younger audience that moves fast and takes its cues from social discovery.
Catrice
For Catrice, we developed an index of the most glamorous cities, ranked across beauty, fashion, and lifestyle signals. This gave us a more aspirational story with strong regional hooks – exactly the kind of angle that lands with a considered audience and gives local journalists something concrete to write about.
the results
The campaign delivered 23 media placements across the UK and Germany, with 65% carrying links back to site. In the UK, coverage landed in titles including TimeOut, Daily Record, and Professional Beauty, averaging a Domain Rating of 67. In Germany, placements including Faz, Blick, and Bunte brought the average Domain Rating to 83 – a strong result by any measure. Across both markets, estimated views exceeded 1.3 million, reaching a combined audience of over 278 million.
The Catrice cities campaign was the strongest individual performer with 14 placements, while the Essence makeup trends campaign secured 9, supported by timely angles that aligned closely with what journalists were already looking for.
Why It Worked
Index-style campaigns earned their place at the centre of this strategy. They give journalists data-backed stories that are difficult to produce independently, and they generate multiple angles from a single dataset – which made it possible to localise outreach across both markets without rebuilding anything from scratch.
Keeping Essence and Catrice positioning separate was just as important. Treating them as distinct audiences rather than one combined brief meant the campaigns were more relevant, and relevance is what drove pickup. The reactive layer added on top meant the work could respond to what was already happening in beauty media, where timing often matters as much as the story itself. And by keeping the focus on link quality, the activity delivered something that outlasts the campaign window – a stronger organic foundation for Cosnova’s broader ambition of building global web presence.
