Maybelline rewrites its 35-year tagline with Miley Cyrus
A collective message replaces a familiar beauty promise as Miley Cyrus fronts Maybelline's permanent brand platform refresh.
A familiar beauty slogan can carry more than a brand name. It can also carry an idea about who gets to be beautiful, and what makeup is supposed to change. Maybelline is revisiting that idea with Miley Cyrus as the face of its latest campaign.
The brand's new global platform changes its long-running line from an individual observation into a collective statement: “Maybe. We're born with it. Maybe. It's Maybelline.” Announced November 10, the change is permanent, rather than a seasonal variation.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- A familiar beauty line gets a different subject
- Miley Cyrus makes reinvention the campaign story
- The new message still has to sell makeup
- What marketers should know about refreshing a famous line
A familiar beauty line gets a different subject
The most consequential change is small enough to miss on a quick read. Maybelline replaces the singular subject with a collective one, while the punctuation gives the opening word its own beat. The brand wants possibility and self-expression to become the center of the message.
35 years after the original line appeared, Maybelline is changing its wording permanently, according to the brand's November 10 announcement, which dates the original to 1991.
For an audience familiar with the slogan, the old structure provides the point of recognition. The altered subject gives the campaign something new to explain. The decision keeps the sound and cadence close enough to the established line that a complete reset is unnecessary.
That is also the creative risk. A small wording change needs a clear human meaning if it is to register as more than a copy adjustment. Here, the intended move is from assessing somebody's appearance toward the different identities a person might choose to explore.
Miley Cyrus makes reinvention the campaign story
Cyrus gives that idea a recognizable example. The campaign connects the singer's changing sounds and looks to the freedom to experiment with makeup. The emphasis is on having different creative chapters without being reduced to any single one.
“I think of 'Maybe.' as all the doors being open,” Cyrus says in the announcement.
Her role also supplies continuity. She gave Maybelline's jingle a new performance in the previous campaign; now she helps explain a change to the words themselves. Those are distinct jobs for an ambassador. One refreshes how a brand is heard, while the other helps translate a revised brand promise.
The current campaign page carries that message through a short film and Cyrus's comments about how beauty fits into different periods of her life. The artist's own experience becomes the route into the brand idea, rather than an unrelated celebrity appearance.
The new message still has to sell makeup
The campaign page connects its self-expression message to familiar makeup categories, including mascara, lip color and concealer. Cyrus's product preferences and application guidance sit alongside the broader story about personal experimentation.
That connection matters because a brand platform has to work beyond a manifesto. A viewer who responds to the idea still needs to understand what it means at a product shelf or during an everyday routine.
Maybelline says the platform will develop through additional women's stories, product innovations, collaborations and campaigns. Those plans create room for different interpretations of the same idea. They do not establish that the positioning has already changed consumer behavior.
The comparison with the earlier jingle is useful. Familiarity can make a campaign easy to recognize, but recognition alone does not explain why a message should mean something different now. The new work has to carry both responsibilities.
What marketers should know about refreshing a famous line
The campaign illustrates a common branding tension: people can recognize a familiar line even when a company wants its meaning to evolve. Maybelline is trying to use that familiarity as the starting point for a new conversation.
- Give the smallest change a clear job.The collective subject is central to the new promise. That makes the wording consequential, rather than a cosmetic edit presented as a transformation.
- Let an existing ambassador explain the next chapter.Cyrus connects the earlier jingle work to the current positioning. A continuing relationship can provide a narrative thread across separate campaigns.
- Make the brand idea visible in product use.The campaign's product guidance gives the self-expression message an everyday application. Without that connection, a platform can remain a statement people agree with but cannot use.
Maybelline has not disclosed results for the new campaign. Its commercial impact will depend on what the platform becomes across products and markets, beyond the opening film.
For brand teams, the interesting part is the balance between memory and meaning. A recognizable line gives an audience a way in. The work that follows has to make the revised promise worth remembering.
