Hi prof and fellow classmates! My group will be presenting to you our research and social media strategies for The Body Shop. Please have a look at our outline below.

Background

The Body Shop was founded in 1976. The founder, Dame Anita always ensured that her cosmetic products were not tested on animals and was a strong advocate of fair trade. The company prides itself on offering high quality products made from natural ingredients obtained from fair trade with over 26 Community Trade suppliers. Since 1986, The Body Shop has established itself as an unconventional beauty brand that has been on the forefront of advocating about worldly issues.

However, The Body Shop brand started on a decline when the L’Oréal Group acquired it in 2006. Since then, the company has struggled to uphold its original brand identity of being an ethical organization and has lost its market share. Today, the brand has over 3,000 stores that span more than 60 countries.

Analysis

Through the use of Synthesio, the group identified that The Body Shop has lost its affiliations with being a “sustainable” and “ethical” business. Rather, consumers associate the brand with words like “beauty” and “makeup”, concluding that The Body Shop’s unique brand positioning has been diluted over the years.

The group has also identified the brand’s strengths and weaknesses as follows:

Strength: Content for product marketing

Weaknesses: Corporate Social Responsibility marketing and user engagement

With the brand’s weak CSR marketing and user engagement on its social media platforms, The Body Shop loses out significantly to competitors like Lush, who generates higher conversation and applause rates through fun and creative advertising and content that is relatable to its target audience.

Objectives

3 research objectives were identified:

1. Build an active community of The Body Shop’s campaign ambassadors
2. Increase audience engagement on social media posts on campaigns
3. Increase brand appeal among target consumers

Message Strategy

From the objectives and taking into account the target consumer of The Body Shop, the core being females aged 20 – 35 who are socially conscious and responsible, the group recommends that The Body Shop develop its marketing efforts around the brand’s new manifesto, “Enrich Not Exploit”. Additionally, instead of rallying its consumers to be global citizens and uniting for global causes, “Enrich Not Exploit” can start from oneself, through a sustainable lifestyle.

Social Media Strategy

3 platforms will be used to, to focus on communicating The Body Shop’s commitment to ‘Enrich not Exploit’ and sustainable living by generating word-of-mouth around the brand and its causes, namely:

1. The Body Shop Mobile App
2. Facebook
3. Instagram

The use of these 3 platforms aim to fulfil the objectives of this research through the alignment of the consumers’ values with the brand, the co-creation of the brand’s identity, the promotion of an active community of brand ambassadors, to spread The Body Shop’s message about sustainability and to build brand loyalty.

Conclusion

Although The Body Shop might be met with obstacles dealing with the sustainability of the campaigns, finding the right amount of incentives to garner higher levels of engagement or even the misinterpretation of marketing messages, the group is confident that there are right mechanisms in placed with each of the suggested social media strategies which would help strengthen The Body Shop’s brand identity of being a sustainable company with its roots in social activism in the following years to come.

Submitted by: Dasuki, Sang Hee, Shermaine, Nicole, Yu Nato