This year’s holiday retail race was decided months ago, and the 2026 race is already underway.

New data from Traackr reveals that the top five beauty brands winning creator attention in Q4 2025 are the same ones that led every quarter this year: Rare Beauty, L’Oréal Paris, r.e.m. beauty, Kylie Cosmetics, and Rhode. Their holiday success can be attributed to consistent creator investment throughout the year, with momentum building quarter after quarter.

These brands took different paths to the top. Rhode and Rare Beauty sustain high creator volume and posting frequency, building continuous momentum. L’Oréal Paris leads through content optimization and disciplined boosting. r.e.m. beauty and Kylie Cosmetics leverage founder-driven reach to amplify awareness. But they all built creator relationships and community trust long before the holiday shopping season began. The brands scrambling to activate creators in Q4 have already lost. 

This data reveals the new reality for creator marketing that’s unfolding: success is predictable and programmable. The brands that win next year will be those investing in creator relationships now, building the foundation that pays off across every quarter.

The New Beauty Creator Marketing Playbook

For brands wanting to dominate next year, here’s where to focus:

• Ensure reach with resonance. Have a clear understanding of the consumer you’re trying to reach—not just demographics, but affinities and values. Partner with creators whose audiences genuinely align with your target customer. When holiday competition is fierce, relevance matters more than volume.
• Treat creators as a feedback loop. The creators you’ve partnered with all year have direct insight into what their audiences want. Ask them which products to bundle, what promotions resonate and what concerns their communities are raising. Smart brands use creator intelligence to inform holiday strategy, not just post about it.
• Build trust early and stay consistent. Strong relationships take months to develop, and you’ll need them established before key moments arrive. Creator marketing has matured beyond one-off activations, and month-over-month creator engagement compounds. The brands showing up every quarter build momentum that becomes unstoppable by Q4. Going dark for six months, then reappearing for holidays, means starting from zero when competitors are already miles ahead.
• Spend strategically. Use organic performance as your signal for what deserves amplification. Amplifying mediocre content just inflates impressions without driving engagement or conversion.
• Invest in creator intelligence. Success in 2026 requires using data to understand not just which creators drive reach, but which ones drive business outcomes. The brands using data to evaluate performance, predict trends, and optimize spend will outmaneuver those still making decisions from gut instinct. 

The window to build 2026 momentum is now. The brands that understand this will own the year before it even begins.

About the Author

Halie Soprano is a senior influencer marketing consultant at Traackr.