About the company:
The Body Shop International is a global manufacturer and retailer of naturally inspired, ethically produced beauty and cosmetics products. Founded in the UK in 1976 by Anita Roddick, The Body Shop now has over 2,100 stores in 55 countries, with a range of over 1,200 products, all animal cruelty free, and many with fairly traded natural ingredients.
The Body Shop was the first international cosmetics brand to be awarded the Humane Cosmetics Standard for their Against Animal Testing policy. And they have their own fair trade program called Community Trade, making them the only cosmetics company with such an extensive commitment to trading fairly. Community Trade now works with 31 suppliers in 24 countries, providing over 15,000 people across the globe with essential income to build their futures.
The Body Shop also has their own charity, The Body Shop Foundation. Launched in 1990 (registered charity no. 802757) they give financial support to pioneering, frontline organizations that otherwise have little hope of conventional funding. The Foundation’s focus is to assist those working to achieve progress in the areas of human and civil rights, environmental and animal protection.
All The Body Shop’s products are made with a love of life, respect for the world we live in, a spirit of individuality, and commitment to trading fairly. In a word – passion.
The Body Shop believes that every woman has the right to feel fabulous, so they put their all into finding the highest quality natural ingredients, ethically and responsibly grown and bought, and turning them into innovative products, honestly marketed, and priced so that everyone can afford them.
The Body Shop runs on passion and five values
Protect the Planet –
In 1985, Farm Aid was born from the passion and commitment of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp, who wanted to give something back to the rural communities that raised them. Since its beginning, Farm Aid has granted over $15 million to more than 100 farm organizations, churches and service agencies in 44 states. Farm Aid supports the efforts of family farmers who are leading the way in developing environmentally friendly farming methods which will ensure a healthy food supply for future generations. The Body Shop supports Farm Aid because they believe in the future of the American family farm, and they believe hemp is an important part of that future. Family farms are being squeezed out by agribusiness, grocery conglomerates, even the declining demand for tobacco. Every week in the U.S. 500 family farms go out of business; and the rural communities they support follow close behind. Hemp offers American farmers a viable alternative to conventional crops like soybeans to corn, and it’s a great rotation for slumping crops like tobacco because it improves soil quality and crowds out weeds. It grows fast and required little, if any, chemical input because of natural pest resistance.
Support Community Trade –
Community Trade is a targeted purchasing program of accessories and natural ingredients from disadvantaged communities around the world. It is The Body Shop commitment to fair trade. The Body Shop gets good quality products at a fair price which covers production, wages and also enables communities to invest in their future. They get a sustained source of income which can be used for improving education or sanitation, building homes and modernizing farming methods, to name but a few. But it is about far more than exchanging goods for money – it is also about the quality of the relationships involved. These trading relationships are based on trust and respect and aim to enable communities to work towards their social and economic goals. The Body Shop Community Trade program all started with Anita in the late 1980’s when she developed trading relationships with local groups she met during her world travels. Now it’s making a world of difference: from some 25 countries, from Australia to Zambia, we trade with over 35 suppliers ranging from Nicaraguan sesame farmers to Indian handicraft producers…
Against Animal Testing –
The Body Shop is against animal testing on cosmetic products and ingredients. They do not test our products or ingredients on animals. Nor do they commission others to do so. They never have and never will. The Body Shop takes positive action to bring about an end to the use of animals in cosmetics testing and to ensure no such testing is carried out by us or on our behalf. They operate a strict purchasing rule that ensures that we don’t use any ingredient that has been animal tested for cosmetic purposes by our suppliers since 31 December 1990. They also support and use alternative tests, inform the public and campaign to ban cosmetics tests on animals. Their product labels state clearly that we are ‘Against Animal Test’ (AAT). The Body Shop’s AAT policy and the annual compliance checks we run involving all our suppliers are also subjected to independent review.
Defend Human Rights –
Human rights are the fundamental things in life that every person on the planet is entitled to. Social and economic issues as health, housing, employment and the right to an education are as much human rights as the political rights such as free speech and protection from torture. The Body Shop believes that as part of the global community, it is the responsibility of every individual to actively support human rights. Whether it’s signing a petition, using our purchasing power to boycott a company, or lobbying governments, we all have the power to effect change. If enough individuals demand change – big business and governments will have to listen. Businesses have an important part to play in effecting social change. Through having a social conscience and acting with social responsibility, businesses can help create lasting change in society. With over 1,900 outlets around the world The Body Shop has an opportunity to raise awareness amongst millions of people. “Our freedom to do so is underpinned by other more basic freedoms that others have had to fight for. It is right that we support them.”
Activate Self Esteem –
Many of Body Shop’s principles are about showing compassion and understanding for other people, but ‘activate self-esteem’ is all about you! Self-esteem is about self-awareness, self-confidence, self-worth, and self-acceptance. It’s about respecting yourself, looking after your body and soul, and being proud of who and what you are. Throughout the ages, women’s bodies have been manipulated to fit the latest fad. They’ve been trussed up, pumped up, corseted and bandaged. Waists have been pinched, skin bleached, ribs removed. The fat sucked out, the silicone injected in. Wouldn’t you rather be measured by your individuality, thinking and lust for life? Stand up for who you really are stand up for self esteem!
The mission statement
The Body Shop Foundation supports innovative global projects working in the areas of human & civil rights and environmental & animal protection. As they say: “We promise to make a difference!”
The Body Shop PR plan will concentrate on women, who care about environmental issues, animal cruelty and making a change in the world.
PR plan according to McGuire’s 12 steps
As the Body Shop has the fundamental identity of being an earthly and natural cosmetics brand, then this message has to be thrown out into the public several times, so the women, who this brand is targeting, become exposed to the message. Nothing happens overnight, so the logo, the message have to become instilled in the back of the women’s mind – in order to do that, they need message exposure. Some women don’t care about environmental issues or that their cosmetics are only made with natural ingredients, so they will not pay attention to these messages, but the ones who do, will pay attention.
Once the woman, interested in environmental issues and animal cruelty, is exposed to the brands message, she will pause to absorb the information in. She might have some personal connection to the issue or like many women, just want to help causes that surround us. Us, women, have a natural nurturing instinct – we want to feel like we are taking care of someone, so if the woman is also about being natural and wants to make a change in the world, she will attend to the message.
Once they have absorbed the information, the message and the brand identity, and they like it, they will become more interested in the issue. It gives a psychological feeling, that this issue, or cause was brought to them, they didn’t have to go out of their way to get to it themselves, and now they have a chance, at that, to be a good human being as well. This concept is very satisfying and rewarding to the human psyche.
Now the women have had multiple rendezvous in their minds with the brands identity and what it stands for, and they are feeling like this is what appeals to them as well. They are becoming more and more comfortable with the topic and are getting more interested in these issues and causes of environment and animal cruelty.
The women are “with the program” and are learning how to think about the issues. They are feeling at home with these problems and causes, and now, when they go to buy a cosmetics product, they will definitely choose the Body Shop, because their opinions and choices are formed already based on these thoughts and self-interest areas of this brand’s mission statement “We promise to make a difference!”.
Now, at this stage, the women will either change the attitudes and opinions they had towards animal cruelty and environmental issues, or they will be more confident about their choices, because they are more informed and have thought deeper about these issues.
Since they are interested very deeply in the issues, they have done a lot of research online and offline, everything they hear about these issues, they will automatically connect to the Body Shop mission. The information regarding the brands ideas and “religion” is stored in these women’s minds, and the next time they will have to make a choice about a product, they will go to their mind storage, and take out the messages that made a positive and self-interest impact on them, and use it. In this case, they will think of helping the environment and animals, and feel like while buying a product, they are donating some of the money to the causes of her interest area.
After receiving the repetitive messages and they have been stored into the women’s brains, they will be able to retrieve these images, messages, mission and causes they want to be a part of, at any time. These ideas are already instilled in these women by now.
Right before making a purchase, or a decision to make a purchase, the women will make the decision on what to buy according to the causes the Body Shop had previously been installing in them, in favor of buying a Body Shop product. They are now making decisions solely based on these information pieces in their memory storage.
After they have tried the product once, and they like or enjoy it, it is more than likely that they will buy that product again. If the woman, however, finds the product useless, she will definitely not buy it for the second time. And if she found that the Body Shop products were working for her in the past, she will in the future make a decision towards choosing the Body Shop product over any other.
PR plan according to Turney’s 10 questions
Who are the organization’s key target audiences?
Women, who are interested in being good world citizens, helping animals with unfortunate fate, helping the environmental causes that surround us today. It is more important to target women with the same psyche and the same interests rather than divide them into age groups. A 19-yearold girl can have the same worries about endangered species or environmental issues as a 45-yearlold woman. So the PR plan has to probe the psychology and the lifestyles of these women, rather than look at the superficial factors about them.
Why is this audience important to the organization?
Women as a whole, all around the world, are in their nature, nurturing human beings. From the beginning of time, women were the ones who took care of the children, and make the surroundings of their home-life livable and warm, comfortable for all, while the males went out to provide food and hunt. This same model applies today as well, only in a slightly different form. The woman wants to feel like she is fulfilling her nurturing needs, and wants to be a good person. She wants to help others out, and it makes them feel accomplished somehow. A man only feels accomplished after he has defeated or risen above other males – he has the most power. A woman has no such need – she feels accomplished by changing things for the better, in their home or, in the case of these particular women, making things better in the world, helping animals and sustaining the environment around us. These women are important, because they are vocal, they stand up for their beliefs and protect their views. Because these issues are in their hearts already, then they go along strongly with the views of the Body Shop. They will feel like they belong, or they have a niche cosmetics product, that they now can use and feel at the same time, that they are helping to make a difference. This gives them more power, and seeing that there are others like them, instills even more these values into their hearts.
What view does the organization want this audience to have of it?
The organization wants its audience to see them as social and environmental activists, helping out communities and the less fortunate in the Third World countries by doing Community Trade.
They strongly point out, that they have never and will never test their products on animals. Their goal is to be seen as “natural” as possible to their costumers. They want to be seen as active and committed in social causes, so that the audience, when using their products, feel like they are also committing and contributing to the social causes of today’s world.
What is this audience’s current view of the organization?
In the organization’s earlier years, even though the products were advertised as “all natural” , theactually weren’t. The bright colors and strong fragrances were created by chemicals, including from petrochemicals, which were also used as preservatives. They were also not publicized as committed to social causes, which today they are putting a lot of emphasis on. The current view of the organization is that the products sold by this company are natural and no animals were used in testing their products – which is also the organization’s goal.
What issues and appeals are important to this audience?
The social, nature and environmental issues are important to emphasize, because the loyal customer base of this organization likes the fact that they are also helping out and donating. A lot of these women do not find that they have extra money on their hands to donate to charities, but with buying a cosmetics product that we need anyway that puts money towards, e.g. Greenpeace, feels like a charity donation in itself, and it is.
Even though this is a very small contribution that goes towards a charity or a cause with every purchase, it makes the consumer feel, psychologically, like they did something significant. A persons psyche is selfish – they feel uplifted and important even if they give something small to the needy. This kind of public relations and marketing strategy works well for the organization and also the clients. They will feel good and choose the brand again, because they will remember the satisfying feeling the purchase gave them.
Which media does this audience use and trust the most?
Most people are connected to the internet daily, whether they sit in an office, at school or at home. Even if they are on the move, many people now have smart phones that are constantly connected to the internet as well. Using social media networks and online news portals and online women’s magazines would make the organization more visible to more potential customers.
The website www.bodyshop.ee (Estonian site) is very modest and looks like it has not been put a lot of effort into. A website could contain many different charity and donation possibilities, and all updates could be connected with social media networks, which update automatically and are in sync.
These women, being environmental friendly, do not for sure buy subscriptions of newspapers or magazines, but read everything online. Plus, being modern women, they want their information fast. Internet is perfect for distributing the messages to these women.
How does this audience’s current view of the organization differ from the desired one?
The current view in Estonia is that the products are somewhat pricey, but are made of natural ingredients.
The desired view is to be seen as a company that is putting effort into being socially active in Greenpeace, in Community Trade in the Third World, fighting against animal cruelty. As for many Estonians, Greenpeace, Community Trade in Third World countries is very far from them and do not touch them personally. The PR plan should focus on these areas, and make the Estonian women, who are environmental friendly and fight against animal cruelty, start being involved in the bigger picture.
The consumers who choose The Body Shop products know of the natural substances used in the cosmetics, but in Estonia, they are not so much aware of the social causes and the contributions the company puts forward. So the desired view of the company is to be understood as a brand who has taken on the whole world to make changes, and that we are all living in the same one world. Estonian people in general are individualistic, and only look and see in front of their own footsteps. These women, who the plan is targeting, being vocal and definitely opinion leaders, will be spreading the word and make other women understand these worldly problems and causes. Make them see, that the pieces and links of this world are connected and working together, and that is how these causes and charities can really make a difference.
What message themes will have the greatest impact on this audience?
Message themes to attract the organization’s audience is all natural cosmetic substances, going green, being eco-friendly, protecting wildlife, animals.
What are the best ways of reaching this audience?
Best ways to reach this audience is via social media. The audience is a regular social media user, and a daily internet user. Using social media to reach their key audience is also environmental-friendly and a money-saver, since no paper is used for advertisements or public relations.
The USA and the UK Body Shops are already represented on Twitter.com:
http://twitter.com/theBodyShopusa
http://twitter.com/theBodyShopUK
and the USA franchise is represented also on Facebook.com:
http://www.facebook.com/TheBodyShop
The Body Shop of Estonia is not represented on Twitter or any other social media network. It is a great way to get closer to the target audience and make them more aware of the whole Body Shop movement. They can do awareness campaigns, different games and basically melt into the audience’s minds by always being visible.
E.g. Send a Twitter message out, saying: #TheBodyShop.ee : For every RT (re-tweet) sent, we will donate 1eek to the Tallinn’s homeless dog’s shelter.
E.g. Send a Twitter message out, saying: #TheBodyShop.ee: Once we reach 2000 followers, we will draw from our followers a winner of 500eek Body Shop gift card.
Keeping the audience always aware of the organization’s doings, makes the consumer think of The Body Shop, the next time they need a lip-gloss or a body butter.
Who will serve as the organization’s primary contact for working with this audience?
The primary contact for working with this audience, would have to be someone, who is a public figure, an opinion leader, and who is, herself, interested in environmental issues and fighting against animal cruelty. A person who would fit good in this position in Estonia would be Lenna Kuurmaa. She is focused on living a natural lifestyle, being eco-friendly, and she is also popular with younger women as well as grown-ups. She is very humble and is active in many areas of social causes already. Adding the Body Shop mission to her social activities, could make her the Green missionary of Estonia.
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tonia which apply to politics, making it also– political culture. In Estonian society the same schools of thinking apply to politics as they do in everyday life of the citizens. The same pattern runs through people’s personal lives as they apply to the political spectrum. Estonians as a people, are very materialistic. Individuals are very success-driven, and people with skilljobs are looked down on. If one is financially secure and can show it off with an expensive car or a house, then it seems like his/her work is done, at the same time yearning for more and more. The same in politics, the main problem running through political discussions and messages forwarded to the public, whether it is recession or not, are budget, deficite, economic growth, economic bloom, wages, financial well-being. This kind of push to be extra successful and constant competition to strive to be more wealthy is a very masculin side of a society that prevails. The political sphere is all the time in a cock fight. In the media, parties are all the time trying to downsize the other parties while trying to show how big and strong they themselves are. Cock fighting is a natural instinct for men, especially in Estonian society. Since in this nation the relationship between a man and a woman is still very oldfashioned, meaning the man is the one who brings the bread and the woman is a homemaker, then women are in the background watching the men fight all their lives to show they are better and more successful than the man standing next to him. Men work so hard constantly without being satisfied with any level of success that they die at a young age of heart attacks. In politics also – we have less and more masculine politicians, but the one who is the most dominant and masculine in his politics, pushes his way through always . This also shows the individualistic approach to politics. Even though we have many parties which all consist of people driven by the same collective goal, then at the end the ones who push through are individuals who do not choose the means how they make it to the top. Politicians even change their whole beliefsystem in order to make it as individuals , and be successful and wealthy as individuals, not sacrifice their individual wealth and success for what is right and just for the well-being of the citizens of the nation. Estonian people are also mostly non-religious, which means there is no spiritual need for a greater power to lead them. Everyone fights for himself and everyone is his own farmer of success. Collectivity is something that pushes people away, probably stemming from the Soviet times, where collective workforce, people being treated like cattle, has taken its toll on the society – they think “never again”. After the break from the Soviet regime, the society is very Estonian-minded. They can finally be open and proud to be Estonians, whereas two decades ago they would have been jailed or killed for that. The desperate emotional need to preserve Estonian nationality and to keep the culture and the language alive can be misinterpreted by other nations as “nationalist” and which is what the Russian community is trying to smear Estonian politics with. Estonian political parties all have national ideologies, and all compete against the one party, Center Party, who wants to appear Estonia-focused, but is in fact focusing on the Russian community. Estonian color themes are prevailing in the parties’ campaigns, where sometimes it seems the parties are doing politics by “national symbols” and not focusing on actual problems that need to be tackled. Estoninan people generally are not very connected to the politics that the government and the parties so eargerly try to run in Toompea . The people have a tendency to think that they just leave the politics to the politicians, because whoever they vote for at the elections, does not win anyway. A large percentage of the people refuses to go voting or just does not care thinking nothing will change anyway. While the other group of people religiously vote and desperately believe in the government and their favored parties. The political culture in Estonia is materialistic, individualistic, nationalistic and masculine. And since the people of Estonia are not programmed to follow a leader, a great force, then it is difficult to make the people follow politics. This tendency will maybe change over generations, but as of now it is every man for himself, his success and his fight to be better than his neighbor while letting the politicians fight their own fights in Toompea, which he can later complain about but do nothing about it.
PR Bubble 