At TelevisaUnivision’s PJ Fest, NYX went dancing with its Latina audience

No dance floor is complete without a makeup bar—at least, not at PJ Fest.

At upfronts earlier this year, TelevisaUnivision announced the expansion of Premios Juventud, its flagship youth music awards show, into PJ Fest, a six-day, multi-city festival experience bringing together brand activations and exclusive concerts for onsite attendees and streaming audiences via YouTube, Facebook, and TelevisaUnivision-owned streaming service ViX. The festival popped up in Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston before culminating with the awards show in Marbella, Spain, on September 3—marking the first time TelevisaUnivision has taken the show to Europe.

But before the show could go on, PJ Fest’s Miami kickoff party, in collaboration with the touring party experience Bresh and powered by NYX Professional Makeup, set the scene.

Abril Reiss, VP of brand partnerships at TelevisaUnivision, told us that the event’s theme, “Prep, Set, Perreo,” offered a natural entry point for the beauty brand. Perreo, a sensual style of dancing tied to Reggaeton music, was the focus of the dance floor, but when partiers wanted to make sure their glam continued looking good throughout, they could visit NYX’s activation, which featured a professional makeup artist applying the brand’s Buttermelt Blush product and included product giveaways.

“Anytime you wanted, you didn’t need to go to the bathroom to touch up your makeup,” Reiss said. “You would just go to the activation.”

For NYX, PJ Fest marked the latest way the makeup brand has aimed to deepen its connection to Latina and Hispanic audiences, according to Ana McMahon, GM for NYX Professional Makeup USA at L’Oréal. The event, she told us, built off previous initiatives like “Pasión Proof,” a World Cup campaign starring Mexican referee Katia Itzel García that spotlighted the emotional moments that soccer fans go through, and the brand’s Super Bowl social campaign, which united prominent Latina creators including Natalie Aguilars, Angela Aguilars, and Karen Gonzalez to create a custom sound celebrating Latina culture on platforms like TikTok.

“Knowing that our vision and mission is not to show up at one-off events, but to show up year-long with our Latina baddies, as we say, [PJ Fest] was already on the radar,” McMahon said.

For the culture

In the US, Hispanic purchasing power has reached $4.1 trillion, according to Nielsen, and in the beauty category alone, the Hispanic community wields $2.7 trillion in spending power. That massive category influence is part of why having NYX as a sponsor at PJ Fest was a no-brainer, Reiss said.

“As a Latina myself and knowing the data and the insights that we have on the Latina consumer…beauty is part of who we are. It’s part of our daily lives. I always remember when I was little, my mom would say, ‘You never leave the house without at least wearing lipstick, because you never know who you’re gonna run into,’” Reiss said. “Having a beauty brand really connecting with the Hispanic consumer in an authentic way, it meant a lot to us.”

The festival’s Miami location was interesting to the NYX team, as it allowed the brand to build upon its existing work in the area following a May appearance at the annual fashion event Swim Week, McMahon said. Plus, the city, which has a majority Hispanic population, has an undeniable connection to Latina culture.

“There are many cities in the US where there’s a strong Latina presence, but to me, somehow, Miami is about expression. It is about passion. It is about breaking boundaries, and I thought that was a fantastic place to kick it off,” she said.

NYX’s Buttermelt Blush got the spotlight because of brand insights that the product was already over-indexing with Hispanic audiences, McMahon said.

“I believe that choosing something that the community already loves is much more authentic in a moment that the community is gathered to dance, to celebrate, to self-express than maybe telling a new story that, in this setup, for me, would have been more force-fitted,” she said.