Olaplex pulled off the ultimate dupe of all time recently with the launch of Oladupé. Olaplex says that it is one of the most duped hair care brands on TikTok (with creators posting content generating 30.4M views of the hashtag #Olaplexdupe). But with its patents, unique ingredients, bond-building technology, and effective results, it is literally impossible to ‘dupe’ Olaplex products. Many people know this, and now thanks to this campaign, everybody will. The campaign has only been in market for a few days but already has over 5.5 million views of the hashtag #Oladupe.
Olaplex, with three billion views for #Olaplex on TikTok, is celebrated for earning cultural relevance with consumers and putting social and community at the heart of everything it does. Olaplex was compelled to join the narrative around dupe culture with a playful campaign led by education. Using social listening tools, the brand identified how often it was being duped and launched Oladupé to show consumers that the only company that could actually dupe Olaplex, is Olaplex itself.
On September 25, the brand launched its fictitious Oladupé product with an unboxing campaign featuring over 100 earned and paid influencers (with more to come), including Lelani Green, Yesly Dimate, Shae Alexis and Audrey Boos. Influencers included representation from the global hair care professional and consumer communities, along with celebrity ‘duper’ Taylor Madison. While the Oladupé product’s label looked very similar to Olaplex, it was clearly marked Oladupé “No. 160” (as an homage to Olaplex’s 160 patents). Consumers were driven to Oladupe.com, where the first 160 people to register were sent a free bottle of Oladupé (actually a bottle of Olaplex No. 3, explaining the joke). Last week, it was revealed that Oladupé was a dupe all along. The influencers and professionals later shared that Oladupé No. 160 was actually the blockbuster Olaplex No. 3 Hair Perfector all along. Olaplex No. 3 Hair Perfector is proven to repair and strengthen hair from the inside out. It is the holy-grail hair pick of hair care professionals and consumers.
“Driven by our reach on social media and the unique relationship we have with our community, we felt compelled to actively insert ourselves into the conversation that was happening around dupes. While imitation is the highest form of flattery, we wanted to have fun with the fact that the Olaplex brand can be imitated but never replicated,” said Charlotte Watson, chief marketing officer of Olaplex.