In an endeavour to put its money where its mouth is, British skincare and beauty brand The Body Shop recently introduced its biggest skincare range with the ingredient 'Edelweiss' revamping the ‘Drops of Youth’ collection. On the occasion of its launch, Lionel Thoreau, Chief Marketing Officer, of The Body Shop said that the brand is sticking to the belief of founder Anita Roddick that businesses can help shape and drive change in our society for the better.

The company that positions itself as a ‘change-making’ beauty brand reviewed its ‘Drops of youth’ collection and its messaging, which could be problematic in the context of insecurity around ageing. 

Sharing the insight behind the new collection, Thoreau said “We thought it was not the right thing to call this product Drops of Youth, but we wanted to rejuvenate it, upgrade it, and make it better and at the same time we wanted to change the name. It was a big commercial bet but we believe it was worth it because we really wanted to be aligned with our values. That's why we have relaunched and made sure that our customers always feel at their best whatever their age.” The brand believes that customers understand that the brand is back to its roots and values - one of the key values being to promote their self-esteem and well-being.

Activist messaging and its impact on the target audience

Thoreau defines the brand’s target audience as "ethically engaged people, especially women." He added “It's people with this mindset - where they love beauty products, they want to have high-performing products, but at the same time, they care about the values that we care about. That's really our core target. It's not only the demographics but a kind of psychographic attitude in all. People who believe in things like sustainability, environmental protection, and social equality are also important in society are our TG.”

Activism and sustainability have been central themes of The Body Shop's messaging for its consumers and it works for them as a brand. The Body Shop has recently launched the Youth Activism campaign, the core insight of which lies in the ethos of the brand.

Shared Thoreau, “We know that humanity is facing big issues and the young generation cares about things like climate change, social inequality, gender inequality, but they don't have a say about it or it’s not enough. What we want to ensure is that they are part of the political debate and they can have their say just like other generations.”

This is the first time that the brand is partnering with the United Nations and is working with NGOs in each country to ensure that the political goals that qualify for this campaign are relevant to the local context.

In India, they have defined two goals. The first is to make sure that young people get registered to vote and The Body Shop aims to add 25 million new registrations. The second goal is to help youth become a part of the decision-making.

Scaling in India and going vegan

The Body Shop is entering markets like Varanasi, Imphal, Indore, Bhopal, Patna, Shimla and more. Sharing the challenges behind scaling to smaller cities and towns of India, Thoreau added “As an inclusive, ethical brand, the first thing we need to ensure is to have a portfolio of products which is suited for the needs of Indian consumers. With a large array of products, it's for people of all ages, all skin tones, and all genders as well and for this purpose. I don't believe that we can decide everything from London and that's why we also have local partners that feed us with insights and the needs of consumers here and guide us when we are developing products.”

Talking from a business standpoint, Thoreau said: “We are very ambitious for the Indian markets. We believe that it's a young, diverse, big population and it really matches our values of inclusivity. We want to double our business by 2025 in India. First, we are going to increase our retail network, increasing it by 50%. We will scale from 200 to 300 stores between now and 2025 entering 15 new cities and we’ll keep on driving the penetration this way. We have a new store concept that we call an Activist Workshop which is super sustainable - 90% of the materials used in this store concept are either recycled or upcycled.”

The brand is also working on having a staff which is motivated by these values, which also increases the store's productivity. During the pandemic, the India team also put in place a ‘ship from store’ program that transformed the stores into warehouses and people could just order products from WhatsApp which the brand is now implementing in the UK as well. The brand, therefore, is looking at expanding the retail networks, store productivity, and accelerating eCommerce and omnichannel services.

In the past two years, the brand has started to regenerate its full portfolio to make it much more sustainable from an environmental standpoint. By 2023, The Body Shop aims to be a completely vegan brand. Sharing insights on the same, Thoreau added “Animal welfare is important to us and this combined with the fact that the meat industry is one of the greatest polluters, becoming vegan was a very natural next step. It's not only about claiming that we are vegan just because our formula does not contain any animal-deriving ingredients. It's also about ensuring the same in the process of creation, development and manufacturing and that we are also being audited and controlled by an independent body. The idea of animal welfare and veganism is already deeply rooted in Indian culture. It started in India and now it's growing across the world.”