Sally Beauty’s COLORfest Named Finalist for 2026 BeautyMatter Awards
Sally Beauty, a leading destination for professional-quality hair color, hair care and nail products, has announced that its March 2026 COLORfest event has been named a finalist in the “Best Event” category of the 2026 BeautyMatter Awards. The recognition highlights the company’s efforts to create immersive consumer experiences that combine beauty discovery, expert guidance and self-expression.
The nomination places COLORfest among the events recognized by BeautyMatter for demonstrating creative thinking and strong execution within the global beauty industry. The “Best Event” category celebrates digital or live event series that extend a brand or business through engaging experiences designed to connect with consumers in meaningful ways.
For Sally Beauty, the recognition underscores the role COLORfest has played in bringing its expertise in hair and nail color directly to consumers while creating an environment centered on creativity, experimentation and personal expression.
A Month-Long Celebration of Color
Sally Beauty introduced COLORfest in March 2026 as a month-long celebration focused on hair and nail color. The campaign was designed to make color more approachable while encouraging consumers to explore new looks, products and techniques.
A key element of the campaign was a consumer-facing pop-up event at The Grove in Los Angeles. The location provided Sally Beauty with an opportunity to bring its color expertise and extensive product assortment into a highly interactive setting.
The experience brought together curated product offerings and expert guidance, allowing visitors to explore different approaches to hair and nail color. Rather than focusing solely on products, COLORfest was built around the broader experience of discovering color and using it as a form of individual expression.
The campaign also provided consumers with opportunities to learn more about products and techniques while engaging with beauty trends in an accessible environment. By combining education, product discovery and hands-on experiences, Sally Beauty positioned COLORfest as a destination where consumers could explore their personal beauty preferences.
Connecting Product Discovery With Self-Expression
Color remains an important part of beauty experimentation, allowing consumers to change their appearance, express their personality and explore different styles. COLORfest was created around this idea, placing self-expression at the center of the consumer experience.
Through the campaign, Sally Beauty sought to make hair and nail color feel less intimidating and more inspirational. Expert guidance helped consumers better understand their options, while the curated product assortment provided access to products designed to support experimentation.
The approach reflects a broader shift in the beauty industry toward experiential engagement. Consumers increasingly encounter products through a combination of physical experiences, digital content, education and social conversations. Events such as COLORfest allow brands to connect these elements into a single consumer experience.
For Sally Beauty, the campaign provided a platform to demonstrate its knowledge of hair and nail color while creating opportunities for consumers to interact with the brand in a more personal and engaging way.
Significant Consumer and Business Reach
The COLORfest campaign generated substantial exposure during its March run. According to Sally Beauty, the celebration generated more than 304 million total impressions across owned and earned channels.
The campaign also introduced thousands of new customers to Sally Beauty, expanding the brand’s reach beyond its existing customer base. In addition, the company reported meaningful increases in comparable sales during the campaign.
These results demonstrate that COLORfest was not only designed as a brand-building initiative but also generated measurable consumer and commercial engagement.
The combination of a physical pop-up experience with broader owned and earned media activity allowed Sally Beauty to extend the impact of the campaign beyond visitors who attended the event in person. Consumers could encounter the COLORfest concept through multiple channels, helping amplify the event and its message throughout the month.
The campaign therefore connected a live consumer experience with a broader marketing strategy, creating opportunities for discovery both in person and through Sally Beauty’s wider communications ecosystem.
Recognition From BeautyMatter
The 2026 BeautyMatter Awards recognize the thinkers, makers and doers helping shape the global beauty ecosystem. The awards highlight initiatives and individuals contributing to innovation and evolution across the beauty sector.
COLORfest has been selected as a finalist in the “Best Event” category, which focuses on the concept and execution of digital or live event series that serve as an extension of a brand or business.
For Sally Beauty, the nomination reflects the way COLORfest extended the company’s traditional retail proposition into an immersive consumer experience. Instead of simply presenting products, the campaign created an environment where consumers could engage with color, receive guidance and explore different forms of self-expression.
The recognition also highlights the importance of execution in experiential beauty marketing. Successful events increasingly need to provide consumers with more than a conventional product display. They must offer useful information, memorable interactions and reasons for consumers to engage with the brand.
COLORfest brought those elements together through its focus on education, curated products and creative exploration.
Making Hair and Nail Color More Accessible
One of the central objectives of COLORfest was to make hair and nail color more approachable. For consumers who may be unfamiliar with certain products or techniques, expert advice can play an important role in building confidence.
By combining professional-quality products with guidance and an immersive environment, Sally Beauty created opportunities for consumers to explore color in a setting designed around discovery.
The campaign also reflected the evolving role of beauty retailers. Modern consumers are not simply looking for places to purchase products; they increasingly seek inspiration, education and personalized experiences. Retailers can respond by creating environments that help consumers understand how products can fit into their individual styles and routines.
COLORfest represents Sally Beauty’s effort to bring those elements together around one of the most expressive areas of beauty: color.
An Extension of Sally Beauty’s Brand Experience
The BeautyMatter Awards finalist recognition also reinforces the idea that COLORfest functioned as an extension of Sally Beauty’s broader identity.
The company has built its offering around professional-quality hair color, hair care and nail products. COLORfest provided a way to bring that product expertise to life outside the traditional shopping environment.
The Los Angeles pop-up at The Grove served as the centerpiece of the campaign, while the wider month-long celebration helped expand the experience across the brand’s owned and earned channels.
This integrated approach enabled Sally Beauty to engage consumers through both physical and broader marketing touchpoints. It also created an opportunity for the brand to demonstrate how product knowledge and consumer education can become part of an experiential campaign.
Building Meaningful Beauty Experiences
The recognition of COLORfest as a finalist comes at a time when experiential marketing continues to play an important role in how beauty brands engage audiences. Consumers are surrounded by beauty content across retail, social media and digital platforms, making distinctive real-world experiences an increasingly important way for brands to create deeper engagement.
COLORfest was built around the belief that hair and nail color can be a tool for creativity and personal expression. Its combination of products, expertise and interactive experiences was intended to help consumers discover new possibilities while developing a stronger connection with Sally Beauty.
The campaign’s reported reach of more than 304 million impressions, its introduction of thousands of new customers and its meaningful comparable-sales increases provide indicators of the broader impact of the initiative.
With its nomination in the 2026 BeautyMatter Awards’ “Best Event” category, COLORfest now receives additional recognition for its concept and execution.
Ultimately, Sally Beauty’s COLORfest represents an effort to turn product discovery into an experience—one that encourages consumers to learn, experiment and express themselves through hair and nail color. The BeautyMatter Awards finalist recognition highlights that approach and places the March 2026 campaign among the beauty industry initiatives being recognized for creating engaging connections between brands and consumers.
About Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc.
Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SBH), as the leader in professional hair color, sells and distributes professional beauty supplies globally through its Sally Beauty and Beauty Systems Group segments. Sally Beauty stores offer up to 7,000 products for hair color, hair care, nails, and skin care through proprietary brands such as Ion®, Bondbar®, Strawberry Leopard®, Generic Value Products®, Inspired by Nature® and Silk Elements® as well as professional lines such as Wella®, Clairol®, OPI®, L’Oreal®, Wahl® and Babyliss Pro®. Beauty Systems Group stores, branded as Cosmo Prof® or Armstrong McCall® stores, along with its outside sales consultants, sell up to 8,000 professionally branded products including Paul Mitchell®, Wella®, Matrix®, Schwarzkopf®, Kenra®, Goldwell®, Joico®, Amika® and Moroccanoil®, intended for use in salons and for resale by salons to retail consumers.
