Jess Hunt, the 27-year-old content creator and co-founder of Refy Beauty, has revealed a new marketing approach that challenges traditional beauty advertising. In a recent interview on the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Hunt discussed the brand’s latest campaign for their new concealer, which features over 1,000 real customers instead of professional models.

The campaign, called The Refy Project, invited members of the Refy community to be shade-matched and photographed wearing the new concealer at events in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and London. Hunt said that participants’ reactions were overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing surprise at how natural the product looked on their skin.

“We wanted to show these concealers off to absolutely everybody and show them on real skin,” she told Glossy. “So often, you see airbrushed images, and [then] you buy a product and think, ‘Well, this looks nothing like that on me.'”

Hunt, who has 1.7 million Instagram followers and 184,000 on TikTok, co-founded Refy Beauty with Jenna Meek in 2020. The brand launched with its Brow Sculpt product, which Hunt says remains their best-seller and took nearly two years to develop.

The success of Refy’s first product stemmed from Hunt’s personal experience with brow makeup. She describes using multiple gels and brushes to achieve her signature look, which inspired the creation of an all-in-one brow product.

Refy’s growth has been quick, with the brand securing shelf space in Sephora by 2021, just a year after its launch. Hunt attributes part of this success to her background as a content creator, a career she began over a decade ago while working for the UK’s National Health Service.