Lady Bountiful

Is trying to do good, really such a good move?

Written by Jonathan Ford, Pearlfisher

Many beauty brands are now looking for new ways to build integrity into their offer and align with the changing needs, wants and desires of society. Eco and sustainable credentials are all but integral to today’s beauty brand offer, but we are also seeing a new altruistic beauty movement gaining momentum, with brands upping the ante in terms of their charity involvement and alignment. But is trying to do good, really such a good move?

Beauty’s New Faith

There are long-standing national and international charity campaigns—such as Breast Cancer Awareness (BCA)—with the focus on the holistic treatment of women. By helping women feel better by looking better, we do, of course, understand the beauty and brand involvement and merchandising by everyone from Sephora—with their BCA branded pop-up mirrors and hairbrushes—to the new range of Natural Inspirations bath and body products launching this October.

But at the moment, it would seem that every new brand initiative we read about is promoting a charity link-up or association. And when it comes to beauty brands with long-standing values and quintessential beliefs, it is imperative to think from the inside out about representing core brand beliefs when choosing a partner or cause. It comes down to defining the right route and brand fit with a particular charitable action—rather than just going for a momentary “halo” effect and association.

Until now, the charity focus has primarily been the domain of the female sector and, while it is great to see male grooming brands now picking up the baton, just picking it up may not be quite enough. For instance, Anthony Logistics for Men’s Anthony Sea Salt Body Scrub is donating to various charities supporting the fight against prostate cancer from each sale made. Apart from being a brand for men, where is the connection? Why now? Why this product? And why—when everyone is donating proceeds to charity—are brands not trying to better stand out by incorporating the charity message as part of the overall product and packaging design?

Chantecaille has answered this very question with its new Chantecaille Sea Turtle Palette—a refillable palette with a base, eye and cheek color and eye definer with a raised turtle design on each shade. It is beautiful and exotic looking, and 5% of proceeds will help the WIDECAST charity ensure the survival of sea turtles. Very admirable but, again, we may question the link between Chantecaille and the threatened species of animals.

It’s such a hard one to get right. Beauty brands are recognizing the need to be good and altruistic but—in reality—what does beauty per se really have to do with charity and, aside from donating proceeds to charity, how else can this work?

Josie Maran has teamed up with City of Hope, a leading cancer research, treatment, and education institution, to launch the Get One Give One (GOGO) campaign. For every GOGO Instant Natural Volume Argan Mascara purchased, Josie Maran Cosmetics will donate one mascara to a City of Hope cancer patient/survivor (up to 5,000 units). Thereafter, $1 from the sale of each GOGO mascara will be donated to City of Hope.

‘Do Gooders’ and ‘Look Gooders’

Of course altruism is nothing new. We know that. But MAC, a pioneer in the arena, managed to maintain its charitable profile and respect by not just proving a long-term commitment to “giving back” via its MACaidsfund.org to support men, women and children living with and affected by AIDS globally, but by using a specific product—VIVA GLAM—“to make a difference one VIVA GLAM lipstick at a time.”
Established in 1994, VIVA GLAM is a collection of continuous shades, launched one per year, that has achieved remarkable success. For Spring 2011, VIVA GLAM captured the essence of Lady Gaga with a delicious new shade of nude Lipstick and Lipglass inspired by The Lady and her passions. MAC has kept the VIVA GLAM offer fresh by ensuring that it is as much about à la mode colors, new and exciting packaging and celeb endorsement, as its charitable mission. The new Gaga inspired GLAM is as bold, forthright and colorful as the lady in question and comes complete with her eponymous signature.

While limited editions have both their fans and foes, there is still a lot to be said (in the charity kudos and desirability stakes) by launching synergistic limited editions rather than just random one-offs.

Sorry to regress for a minute but one of the very best limited editions in recent times—which really did tick all the boxes—had to be the launch of EDUN’s nature-based makeup palettes with Sephora for Earth Day 2010.

With a choice of two colorways, each palette was clad in a natural wood case, with an innovative swivel lid and an organic cotton drawstring bag made in Uganda and marketed as doubling as an MP3 holder. True to EDUN’s mission of driving self-sufficiency in developing countries, the palettes were fairly made to support sustainable trade, with $3 from every sale going to the Wildlife Conservation Society to fund the Conservation Cotton Initiative in Uganda, which promotes organic cotton farming to improve the livelihoods of local communities. A simple, sustainable, synergistic—and beautiful—design.

Campaign-able Beauty

But alongside our good works for charity, beauty has also become a more campaign-able force to be reckoned with as brands realize that they can move away from the plethora of real-time events and social media campaigns and use the packaging design of their products as the brand manifesto.

Sustain is a range of soap bars made from 100% RSPO certified sustainable palm oil. The packaging has been designed to specifically inform and educate the consumer about the felling of vegetation in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for palm oil plantations and the devastating impact this is having on animal habitats with many endangered species now in danger of extinction.

“A simple texture-based illustration style was developed for three different bars. We created a character for each bar based on animal species in danger of becoming extinct from unsustainable palm oil production. Creative copy gave each animal real personality and also highlighted their plight.” (Source: www.thedieline.com)

And the strapline really says it all:“Wash your hands of unsustainable palm oil, you’ll not only have clean hands, but also a cleaner conscience.”

It’s a new approach, with a forceful but fun design aesthetic, which is very much keeping the look and mission of the market fresh.
Cause Versus Conscience?

With the widespread change of designing for social impact affecting the whole brand and design community, beauty is obviously driven to maximize the opportunity. But while we all have a more developed conscience and are looking to brands to help us make the right, informed choices, we do not necessarily want to have our choice informed by a good cause rather than by color or covetousness! And this is where design and new design devices and expressions can—but should not—be ignored.

Currently a student project, but one which must surely come to market, is the design of Egoiste by Chanel, by Madeleine Skjelland Eriksen, who has the greater good in mind with a Braille makeover that allows everyone to enjoy the fragrance.

Designed in a sleek, steel bottle to “underline the masculinity and sophistication” of the product, Eriksen does a great job of incorporating the Braille as an integral part of the packaging by neatly slotting it underneath each printed word.

Future beauty will inevitably be about many ideals and with a new age of consumerism driven by inventiveness, creativity, discovery and giving back, beauty will need to shift in line with this, from being detached and untouchable to finding inspiring ways to explore causes, blend influences and create awareness.

About the author:
Jonathan Ford is a designer and creative partner of Pearlfisher—www.pearlfisher.com