In 2016, YouTube-style full glam was the reigning beauty aesthetic as a new wave of mega creators taught beauty consumers how to contour their faces and highlight their brows. Ten years later, nostalgia for 2016-era makeup is back. Mass beauty brand Physicians Formula is hoping to capture the trend with a throwback campaign to honor one of 2016 beauty’s favorite products, the Butter Bronzer.
On Wednesday, the beauty brand celebrated the Butter Bronzer’s 10th anniversary with a new nostalgia-laced “You’re a 10…with your ButterFace” campaign. To further tap into the 2016 nostalgia, the brand partnered with two of beauty’s OG YouTube personalities, Jaclyn Hill and Manny Gutierrez, better known as Manny MUA, on paid content around the bronzer’s anniversary. Physicians Formula will also launch a limited-edition jumbo edition of the powder bronzer at Ulta Beauty on July 12, followed by a rollout to Walmart on August 3.
“Butter Bronzer was such a key product back in 2016. Like, I have so many core memories around the 2016 YouTube beauty era involving this product,” said Hill, who became one of YouTube’s largest beauty creators after launching her channel in 2011.
The anniversary campaign marks the first time Hill has worked with Physicians Formula on a paid partnership. But according to Alice Chen, CMO and head of corporate communications for Physicians Formula’s parent company, Markwins Beauty Brands, she and other 2016-era influencers were instrumental in the product’s success.
“Butter Bronzer didn’t take off at launch, but then a magical thing happened: Jaclyn Hill organically put out a video review of her screaming at the Butter Bronzer scent and gushed about its formula,” said Chen. “From there, Manny reviewed Butter Bronzer, followed by influencer after influencer after influencer.”
According to Chen, Physicians Formula sells roughly 1.5 million Butter Bronzers worldwide each year. Mass retailers are the brand’s biggest sales driver, she said, with Walmart leading the charge, followed by Target.
Allergist Dr. Frank Crandall first launched Physicians Formula in 1937. In 2012, it was acquired by Markwins, which also owns drugstore cosmetics brands Lip Smacker and Wet n Wild. According to Chen, Physicians Formula is Markwins’ second-largest brand and comprises roughly 30% of the company’s annual sales.
Physicians Formula has updated its product assortment to match the times — its $13 Bronze Booster Sun Tint has been held up as a dupe to Victoria Beckham Beauty’s viral bronzing tint — but today’s consumers have shown interest in returning to 2016-era styles. According to TikTok, searches for “2016” were up by 452% in the first few days of 2026.
“It was such a happy time. It was like the peak of beauty YouTube, where, for the first time in my life, I was connecting with so many people just over the love of beauty,” said Hill of the era’s current popularity. “We were all learning from each other. We were just talking about product, and we were doing the absolute most with winged liner. Blush wasn’t even a thing, like literally. I look back at 2016, and my face is just covered in bronzer and highlight with no blush.”
Beauty norms have certainly changed since 2016 — today’s consumers can’t get enough blush, and winged liner has been dismissed as millennial cringe. But perhaps the biggest shift has been in the role of content creators: while in the 2010s, influencers like Gutierrez and Hill had to cultivate millions of followers before they could cash in on brand partnerships, in the TikTok era, almost anyone can become a viral content creator overnight.
That has changed the game for beauty brands, which can now seed products to hundreds of smaller creators rather than relying on one mega creator to spread the word.
“It’s crazy to say this, because I am a content creator, but I don’t think that a lot of brands need content creators as much as they used to,” said Hill. “In 2016, it was more like a product would launch, and there would be a handwritten PR package sent to the top 20 content creators. They would be dying for us to talk about it, but it’s really not like that anymore. If it’s a good product, it’ll kind of take care of itself on social media, because so many people have a voice now.”
While Physicians Formula is aiming to make 2026 the year of the Butter Bronzer once again, the brand is also looking ahead to the next big milestone: According to Chen, the brand is already planning its 90th anniversary celebrations for 2027.
But Hill, who has nearly 15 million followers across her YouTube, Instagram and TikTok pages, is not looking for her next viral moment. She is content to leave those to the next wave of content creators.
“I don’t really have a lot of viral moments, strangely enough,” she said. “I think that I’m one of those creators where I kind of just coast. I have my audience, my audience trusts me, I love them, they love me.”
