The Body Shop North America
The Body Shop is known as a feminist brand that “does the right thing”. Many consumers have a nostalgic relationship with the brand, developed through the company’s historic campaigns against animal testing and support of women and girls.
The Challenge
The Body Shop is known as a feminist brand that “does the right thing”. Many consumers have a nostalgic relationship with the brand, developed through the company’s historic campaigns against animal testing and support of women and girls. Recent changes have dampened The Body Shop’s trailblazing activism, and the brand engaged Yulu to determine a new, bolder narrative for how and where The Body Shop seeks to create social and environmental impact in North America.
The Strategy
Yulu led The Body Shop North America’s activism team through an extensive discovery process to explore how the company can more effectively refine its brand activism focus and approach within this market. As part of the strategic process, Yulu interviewed eleven carefully selected internal and external key voices to collect their insights on The Body Shop’s past, present and future activism. Those insights, along with detailed benchmarking research on relevant organizations in the brand activism space, informed the development of a compelling brand activism framework and visually articulated Yulu’s strategy and recommendations for how The Body Shop can regain its position as a catalyst for change.
The Results + Impact
Yulu developed three strategic priority areas for The Body Shop North America’s activism framework, each of which outlined evidence-informed and actionable commitments that the brand will fulfill to achieve social and environmental impact. These commitments provided approaches to internal and external activism, as well as systemic and policy change. The framework also includes considerations for how to triage emerging issues and engage internal and external audiences to take action. Through a ‘freedom within a framework’ model, Yulu synthesized and showcased clear guidelines for how The Body Shop can progressively move the needle on key issues by tailoring tactics to affect change at both regional and global scales.