Minimalist vs The Derma Co: Whose Creator Reels Get More Views?

Introduction: Minimalist vs The Derma Co – Creator Marketing Compared

A Minimalist vs The Derma Co creator reels comparison has to start with a data limitation: neither brand ranks among the ten highest-volume advertisers in the platform's Skincare category over the last six months, so there is no single "brand total" to pull directly. What the data does support is a verified sample: creators whose own hashtag history confirms a genuine, repeated link to one brand or the other, benchmarked against the wider Skincare category.

This piece uses collaboration data for the Skincare category from 2026-05-16 to 2026-11-12 (16,349 collabs, 7,892 creators, 488 brands), plus six creators whose profiles carry brand-specific hashtags such as #thedermaco, #thedermacosunscreen or product tags like #b12moisturizer next to #minimalist. That combination of category benchmarks and verified creators is the fairest comparison the available data allows.

How Minimalist and The Derma Co Use Creator Reels

The hashtag trail points to two different playbooks. The Derma Co's confirmed creators — @styleonair_ and @mr_arsh012 — are primarily fashion, lifestyle or men's-grooming accounts who fold a sunscreen or acne product into a broader content mix alongside hotel, footwear or apparel collaborations. @im_gurpreet.kaur, confirmed via #thedermaco and #thedermacosunscreen, mixes beauty, tech and lifestyle content in the same way.

Minimalist's confirmed creators — @manikavishwakarma_, @rajattrawattt_ and @mahideswall — skew smaller and more beauty-specific, with product-level hashtags next to generic skincare tags. That fits a micro-to-mid-tier, ingredient-education approach: the creator explains a specific actives-led product rather than wrapping it into a general lifestyle reel.

Average Reel Plays per Brand: Who Gets More Views?

Across the Skincare category, the average collab reel pulled 352,615 views on a median engagement rate of 1.24%, across 16,349 collabs from 488 active brands. The tenth-largest brand by collab count in that window, vurvesalon, still logged 234 collabs in six months — well above the handful of confirmed posts this sample could trace for Minimalist or The Derma Co, which run smaller, more selective creator rosters.

| Metric (verified creator sample) | Minimalist-linked creators | The Derma Co-linked creators | |---|---|---| | Creators verified | 3: @manikavishwakarma_, @rajattrawattt_, @mahideswall | 3: @styleonair_, @mr_arsh012, @im_gurpreet.kaur | | Average reel plays (creator channel average) | 460,597 | 1,866,295 | | Average engagement rate | 8.96% | 2.29% | | Average followers | 195,888 | 1,237,156 | | Top-performing creator by views | @manikavishwakarma_ (538,766 avg views) | @styleonair_ (3,941,307 avg views) |

Read the table with one caveat: these are each creator's overall channel averages across their collab content, not an isolated average of only their Minimalist or Derma Co posts, since the data does not expose a brand-filtered view count for a single collab. What it does confirm, through each creator's own top hashtags, is a genuine, repeated association with the brand named.

Creator Performance Analytics: Views, Engagement Rate and Content Formats

The Derma Co's verified creators post from a much bigger base. @styleonair_ alone averages 3,941,307 views per reel on about 1.5 million followers, well above the Skincare category's own 352,615 average. That scale comes with a trade-off: his average engagement rate sits at 3.16%, and @mr_arsh012's at 1.77%, both close to or below the category's 1.24% median. Large fashion and lifestyle accounts generate views efficiently but dilute engagement, since only part of their audience is there for skincare content specifically.

Minimalist's creators show the opposite pattern. @rajattrawattt_ averages a 15.15% engagement rate on 444,137 average views, and @manikavishwakarma_ averages 9.0% on 538,766 views — both far above the category median of 1.24%. Smaller, topic-focused accounts convert a larger share of their audience into likes and comments per view, which matters for a brand selling active ingredients that need explaining rather than just showing.

Which Brand Collaborates with More High-Performing Creators?

"High-performing" depends on the metric. On raw reel plays, The Derma Co's confirmed set wins clearly, averaging roughly four times Minimalist's figure. On engagement rate, Minimalist's set wins just as clearly, averaging close to four times The Derma Co's rate. Neither brand's confirmed creators appear in the category's highest-viewed posts; those belonged to much larger advertisers.

These posts are not Minimalist or The Derma Co content. They show the ceiling for reel views inside the Skincare category, useful context for judging how much headroom either brand has if it chose to bid for larger, mega-tier creators instead of its current roster.

What Makes Their Creator Marketing Strategies Different?

The Derma Co's approach looks built for category education at scale: put the product in front of large, general audiences repeatedly, accept a lower engagement rate, and let impression volume do the work. Minimalist's approach looks built for ingredient-literate audiences: work with fewer, smaller creators who already talk skincare routines and specific actives, and let a higher engagement rate signal genuine interest.

Neither is inherently better; it depends on the funnel stage a brand is optimising. A reach-first push, such as a new launch, tends to favour The Derma Co's model. A consideration-stage push, such as explaining why a specific active works, tends to favour Minimalist's model. A founder weighing this should decide which stage is underperforming before copying either playbook outright.

How Skincare Brands Can Identify High-Performing Creators

Spotting a creator like the ones above before a competitor does means filtering on more than follower count. Useful screens include engagement rate relative to the category median (1.24% for Skincare, per this data), audience gender split matched to the product, and a hashtag or caption history that already shows organic skincare content rather than one-off paid mentions.

A creator discovery tool that filters by niche, subniche, follower band, engagement rate and audience demographics in one pass is faster than manually scrolling hashtags, which is effectively what had to be done by hand to build this comparison. This is the gap the MyWall influencer marketing platform is built to close.

Its Creator Discovery module searches by skincare subniche, bio and hashtag keywords, engagement-rate floor and audience composition at once. That replaces cross-checking each candidate's post history one profile at a time, which is the slower manual route this article had to take.

How MyWall Helps Analyse Competitor Creator Campaigns

Benchmarking a brand a team doesn't own, as this article had to do for Minimalist and The Derma Co, is the core use case for MyWall Genie, an AI-powered competitive-intelligence feature. It pulls a competitor's creator collaborations, reel performance, and content trends into one view, instead of a team manually checking which creators carry a brand's hashtags.

Genie surfaces category benchmarks — median engagement rate, average views, peak collaboration months, repeat-creator rate — and brand-level rankings the way this piece used category data for Skincare. A team deciding whether to chase The Derma Co's reach model or Minimalist's engagement model can run that comparison directly instead of estimating it from public posts.

Final Verdict: Minimalist vs The Derma Co – Who Wins on Creator Reel Views?

On views alone, The Derma Co's confirmed creator set wins clearly: 1,866,295 average reel plays versus Minimalist's 460,597, driven by larger-audience fashion and lifestyle creators. On engagement rate, the result flips in Minimalist's favour, with its creators averaging close to four times the comparison group's rate. Brands reading this as a template should match it to their own goal: chase The Derma Co's model for impressions, or Minimalist's model for an audience that visibly engages with the content.

Related reading

• Most-Hired Skincare Creators of 2026 — a broader hiring benchmark for skincare creators.
• Reels vs Carousels for Skincare Influencer Collaborations — useful for briefing the creators identified here.
• Beauty Influencers With the Most Consistent Reel Views — a complementary lens on reliability over peak views.
• Mamaearth Influencers: What Creators Does It Hire? — another brand-specific creator breakdown for comparison.