Campaigning for change: Their future in our hands
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Need to turn ‘look away’ into ‘look at me’?
“300million continually impress on two counts: the intelligence of their designs and their desire to work collaboratively. They understand the dynamics of large, global brands like The Body Shop. This means they approach an enormous challenge, like designing our international campaign identity, with the right balance of refreshing energy and sensitivity. No clichés, just clever design that meant we had a truly global icon for the campaign with a ‘hidden bonus’ for English speaking countries. They are also really keen to work together. Far from adopting the disappearing- down-a-rabbit-hole approach, they look to ensure that they are operating like a virtual in-house team. This closeness gives greater depth to the process and, ultimately, makes the work stronger. Their positive attitude explains why The Body Shop has a very high regard for 300million.”
Philip Clough
Brand Director
The Body Shop
Discover
Client background
Activism is part of The Body Shop’s DNA and continues to be key to its strategy. Global customer research, commissioned by the company in 20 countries with more than 15,000 people, supports this approach. With more than 2,600 stores in 63 countries worldwide, the brand has an ideal, ready-made environment to bring these issues to public attention and inspire change.
Business challenge
Although The Body Shop has a rich heritage in successful campaigning, in more recent years its authority in this area had been waning. The Body Shop needed a high profile campaign to re-establish its credentials amongst consumers as a leader in campaigning for change.
Enter Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young Children, a three-year global campaign in partnership with NGO ECPAT, the international network of children’s rights organisations. The campaign aims to put an end to the trafficking of children and young people, guarantee their rights to be protected from exploitation and inspire long-term change to strengthen the protection offered to these children and young people.
The Body Shop stores tell the campaign story, its people donate their time for on-the-ground campaigning, and a ‘Soft Hands Kind Heart’ hand cream was specially developed to fund the campaign – with profits on sales donated to ECPAT. From a commercial perspective the campaign needed to be substantial enough to get franchisees on board and make it worth giving up a window, since shops sell volume of product on a daily basis, based on what’s in the window.
Campaign objectives
A strong campaign brand, visual identity and campaignable ideas needed to:
- Drive sales of The Body Shop’s specially created Soft Hands Kind Heart hand cream – a target of £1 million in profits on sales over 24 months to be donated to ECPAT.
- Attract 6 million signatures on petitions worldwide by the end of year two to create the largest campaign petition in The Body Shop’s 36-year history.
- Encourage as many local markets to participate in the campaign as possible.
Define
Our main challenge was how to turn ‘look away’ into ‘look at me’. Thus was born the central idea around the campaign brand: to turn this terrible crime into a positive message – their future is in our hands.
Design
This difficult and distressing subject needed to be engaging in a retail setting to encourage people into shops to buy products, sign petitions and actively participate in the campaign, not turn them away. The brand idea also needed to stretch to support the campaign when it came to lobbying governments and potential partner organisations.
Our creative solution goes way beyond a logo in the corner of a poster or the logo on a hand cream pack:
- We worked with The Body Shop’s in-house design team to create activation ideas around social media, active engagement with stars and celebrities, launch concepts for retail environments, viral campaigns, digital media, PR and countless other activities.
- A strong graphic hand print symbol anchors the campaign – people connect with it on various levels and it works at any size, across all media and markets. It’s also a link to the Soft Hands Kind Heart hand cream.
- The writing style is flexible enough to engage audiences ranging from The Body Shop customers to politicians and policy-makers.
- Yellow with black is the most eye-catching colour combination to the human eye and is universally recognised to mean danger, but an injection of bright magenta represents a positive can-do attitude, appeals to feminine sensibilities and fits within a retail beauty environment.
- A brand look and feel and a set of guidelines allows The Body Shop’s in-house design team and local stores to implement the brand across all communications and activities.
The result? A flexible system that can be implemented in a relevant way on a market-by-market basis.
Deliver
Two years in and the results speak for themselves:
- Donations to ECPAT to fund the campaign exceed objective by 200%: after 24 months, profits of Soft Hands Kind Heart hand cream generated just over £3 million in donations to ECPAT – 200% more than £1 million objective.
- 6.6 million signatures on petitions worldwide, surpassing the 6 million target by 10% and firmly enshrining this as The Body Shop’s biggest campaign ever.
- The largest ever human rights petition was presented to the EU commission in June 2011. Plus fifteen countries handed their petitions to national governments by July 2011, securing commitments beyond The Body Shop’s greatest hopes and expectations.
- 65 markets launched this campaign – more than any other campaign in The Body Shop’s history and further asserting this as The Body Shop’s biggest campaign ever.
