Context

Unilever wants to be a progressive beauty business. However, the commitments at the centre lacked the differentiation to cut-through.

Brief

They came to us for an iconic campaign that would position Unilever as a progressive beauty business.

Objectives

• Grow awareness for Unilever Beauty & Personal Care to make people feel emotionally engaged with our business by:

o Build presence and credibility for BPC by showing that we are a progressive beauty business

o Stand out from competitors (big and small) with a distinct perspective on a beauty issue

o Contribute to the conversation by providing original, new insight

We conducted research in 9 markets around the world to understand people’s perception of the beauty industry and the actions they wanted to see taken.

71% think the word ‘normal’ on beauty products impacts people negatively.

56% of women are dissatisfied with their overall appearance

43% of men show escalating dissatisfied with their appearance

The beauty industry exists to help people feel better, but often makes them feel worse.

Products created for ‘normal skin’ and ‘normal hair’ suggest that there is a ‘normal’, and that anything outside of that is ‘not normal’ or ‘lesser’.

But what is normal anyway? Traditional product descriptions have become discriminators.

To counteract this outdated and harmful approach and make way for a more inclusive future, we had to take a significant transformational step for the business and exclude the word ‘normal from the company’s entire lexicon, including all packaging, product descriptors and communications worldwide.

Removing the word and idea of ‘normal’ from all packaging, advertising and content in Unilever’s beauty and personal care business, demonstrated an urgent and compelling brand strategy that leaned into Unilever’s positive beauty beliefs and reassured their positioning as an inclusive and progressive beauty brand.

Like all game-changing ideas, the simple and innovative solution behind ‘No To Normal’ will drive change far beyond the Unilever brand and campaign itself.

By being the first brand to completely exclude the word ‘normal’ from its lexicon, Unilever is leading the way towards a more inclusive future for everyone.

Re-establishing the cultural norms of terminology around beauty products is a real-world activity that will changes the unconscious messaging of the world around us.

While the personal impacts are hard to quantify, by removing damaging language from their products Unilever is contributing to a positive beauty culture where people feel respected and encouraged. The positive impacts on mental wellbeing and inclusivity are apparent.

‘Normal’ removed entirely from Unilever brand packaging, content and collateral.

• Covered in over 80 countries

o 8,200 articles

o 5.5B impressions

o 318K engagements

• 12.3K total mentions across media

• 9.4K earned mentions across media, social and CEC over a two week period

• 287K engagements (interactions with online news and social media).

• 2/3rds of conversation focused the decision to remove ‘normal’

• 74% of discussion was praise or neutral advocacy (i.e. sharing articles)

• 56% of coverage on Twitter

• ‘Unilever’ in more than 80% of headlines

• +16% uplift in ‘Unilever’ visibility in the two weeks post campaign

• +50% growth in online visibility for key brands, including Dove, Vaseline and Lifebuoy

• 20 times the online response of our competitors, P&G and L’Oreal

• Covered by the NYT, BBC, Guardian, Fast Company, Glamour, Allure, Refinery29, Reuters, CNN, Cheddar, The Cut, Elle, Marie Claire, Harper’s, Forbes, Stuff, Esquire, Cosmopolitan… and more.

• Fiercely debated on Fox News!