Aveda Proves "Beauty is as Beauty Does" in 2008 Campaign

When consumer fears about global environmental issues are reaching their zenith and everyone’s desperate to get on the green wagon, what about those who’ve been on it for years?

Well if you’re Aveda, the Estée Lauder-owned holistic, prestige beauty brand, then it’s about time you did some green-message shouting.

After years of product-focused marketing, the brand’s 2008 campaign replaces make-up with an activist message that will drive home the brand's rep as an authentic green company. The first such iteration appears at right (click to enlarge).

“Consumers values are rapidly changing and its not just that core [environmentalist] group that is into green issues,” Suzanne Dawson, vp of global marketing, told me at Aveda HQ here in New York. “That’s why we’re re-prioritizing and bringing our brand messaging to the forefront. We’ve always talked about our environmental work to the trade, but now it’s time to start shouting it to a larger audience.”

Per Suzanne, 8 out of 10 Americans now believe that it is important to purchase products from green companies, which is a huge deal for green players like Aveda.

The new campaign, dubbed “Beauty is as Beauty Does,” features creative that tackles a different green issue every six to eight weeks, with both print advertising and in-store displays across the company’s 8,000 owned and partner salons worldwide. For a preview of the upcoming work, keep reading.

First up is wind energy and the company will be playing up its rep at the first beauty company to manufacture products using 100% wind energy. The print creative, which hits in January issues, shows your typical fashion model shot—windswept hair cascading off a statuesque model—except for the fact she’s shot against the backdrop of the windmills Aveda uses to power its Blaine, Minn. Factory.

The spot reads: “First beauty company manufacturing with 100% wind power,” and carries the tag: “Smooth hair. Protect clean air. Beauty is as beauty does.” In stores, that same image will dominate window displays, while a different iteration promote the launch of the brand’s new humidity defense styling product, tying the new goods to the wind power message.

On the design front, the campaign will use blockier fonts (it's "Knock Out," fyi) that global creative director Antoinette Beenders (who still does heads in the London salons, btw), said was geared at giving the creative a more "activist" message.

“We wanted it to make a strong statement that would have people stop when they were walking by the store, or when they were flipping through a magazine,” she said. “We wanted to make it much more impactful [than before], to be more in your face for consumers, to say ‘These are the facts. This is what Aveda is about.”

But that's not the only place where they're shaking it up. The print ads will run in a selection of books that use post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials in  their publishing practices. Some of those including Shape, Natural Health, and Ecologist. The brand is also looking into targeted, green-themed issues of wider distrib-ed pubs like Elle.

Understandably, that presents some challenges for a brand in an industry where the usual battery of glossies is a make or break requirement. But Suzanne felt that the authenticity of advertising, and tacitly, supporting those pubs would ultimately make the stronger statement for the company.

“We’re trying to establish that point of difference for Aveda," she said. "We want to make our environmental message clear.”

In late February, the messaging will shift to a discussion of packaging waste, promoting Aveda’s use of up to 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials in packaging its multitude collections. Print creative carries the tag: “What a beautiful waste,” and references the brand’s waste reduction efforts. The in-store product campaign, which supports the relaunch of the lipstick line, will read “More lip, less packaging.”