Case Study
CORPORATE PR / B2C PR

How we lathered up media awareness for Lush to share their sustainability-driven and fresh business approach

Client

Lush
www.lush.com/de/de

Project date

June 2022 – October 2023

Services

CORPORATE PR

B2C PR

The results

15

MONTHS

35

Clippings

22.8M+

REACH

The brief

Just like real dogs, us Space Dogs have excellent noses and love anything that smells nice, which is why we got incredibly excited when Lush reached out to us to start working together!

Not just to us, but to many beauty-lovers, Lush is known for bringing sparkles and wellness into everyday life. The brand has been a household name for sustainable beauty products for many years. But for Lush this isn't enough, they're more than a beloved beauty brand, they want to establish themselves as a brand for the future. And because there's still so much more Lush wants to share with the world, they reached out to us for assistance. As their consultants, it became our mission to develop a strategy that would help Lush not only make a splash, but make waves!

With more than two decades of experience under their belt, Lush learned a lot about how to run a business and speak up for what they believe in—keeping their side of the street clean. To Lush, this means positioning themselves as field experts on sustainable business practices, teaching others how to do it too and leading by example into a greener tomorrow. Their mission? “Leaving the world Lusher Than We Found It”! After understanding Lush's motivation, we set out to create a steady beat of coverage and highlight Lush's ambitions for the future!

The campaign

After starting our collaboration, we got right to work and started laying a trail of bath bomb crumbs that would lead the attention to Lush’s newest projects. By which, we mean we started to pitch the “Bring it Back” initiative, which aims to reduce packaging waste, to relevant journalists, which Lush started in March 2022. This goes to show that even established brands will always come up with new improvements, and that it's important to keep up with them.

In August 2022 Lush celebrated their 20-year anniversary with a new exclusive soap and a promise to “Leave Germany Lusher than we found it”. With that news, we approached journalists such as the team at BeautyPunk and sent them the celebratory “Avo-versary” (avocado-scented soap), to revel in the nostalgia of the colorful, glittery soaps and remind them that Lush is ready to share their vision for the future. This way we got to remind people of Lush's past and also interest them in their future.

Since Lush believes people should experience a product before they buy it, and we believe journalists should experience something before writing about it, we approached media with opportunities to visit the stores and factories. Furthermore, we offered many opportunities for podcast creators to speak to Lush about their new work approaches and landed Lush a spot in the HR Snackbar Podcast. Talking to the team directly helps foster a personal connection, and those are incredibly important to keep people invested in your cause.

In 2021, Lush took a stance against marketing themselves on social media such as Instagram and Facebook, because of the warped perception of reality that those foster. This bold step opened a new conversation about the morality of marketing, which we highly encouraged by offering interviews and bylines with the likes of Horizont and OnetoOne. These personal interviews made the mission statement of Lush way more tangible and were in tune with their principles, which highlight encouraging critical dialogue with their peers and customers.

While everyone is vaguely aware of the history of Lush, we decided it would be important to do a proper retrospective, to show that Lush has always been all about sustainability and creative new ideas. So we landed a profile with Business Punk in which Mark Constantine, the founder himself, spoke about what makes Lush a true evergreen!

To further position Lush as experts and innovators, we decided to aim for speaker slots at summits in Germany, such as the 2023 OMR Summit. During it, Lush spoke about their marketing approach after the social switch-off and their “Social Manifest”, as well as their sustainable approach to Big tech in their business practices. This way we got to present the serious, ambitious side of Lush—because pretty products don't equal frivolous business!

However, we won't just bathe in these successes, but still strive to inform media about any updates from Lush regarding new developments in their sustainability approach and collaborations. This way, we create a steady drum-beat of coverage that helps Lush linger in the public's mind, just like their signature scents.

The results

By helping Lush leave the world lusher than they found it, we also hoped to achieve the same for the media landscape! While working together, we have scored 35 clippings, 22 of those were part of top tier media outlet reports. Within those, Lush got to share their expertise on topics such as their commitment to sustainable business practices and taking social responsibility within the corporate world, with initiatives like their social media switch off. We also actively positioned Lush as thought leaders and helped them organize speaking opportunities, such as at the OMR summit, and gave journalists the opportunity to speak with the Lush team directly in interviews and podcasts.

We know that in order to make a difference in the world, it's important that people know your name and what you stand for. Because of this, we're determined to help Lush cause a purple, sparkling, lavender scented ripple effect on the sustainability and retail scene.