2014 Silver Best Use of Social Media for Brand Building

Client Unilever Simple

How did the campaign make a difference? Simple® skincare’s mission was to connect with teens help them have better skin days. For most teens, skin is the enemy, only getting attention when a problem arises. By understanding this, and teens themselves, Simple® were able to give the advice they needed, changed their perception and became a trusted brand.

Our challenge was to provide an authentic and relevant campaign that they’d like and do so on a platform they loved.

Strategy Simple® didn’t just have a brand awareness problem, it had a category problem. The campaign needed to get past the audience’s embarrassed approach to skincare in order to talk to them.

Simple® asked its audience to help frame the challenge – shopping with them, running workshops with them and going on social media with them to understand their usage and motivations.

The brand needed to be realistic about its role in teens’ lives and earn a right to play in a space they called ‘home’. By telling its story in the right way, through the right platform and most importantly through the right storytellers, Skin Social was born: a branded social experience to communicate the Simple® holistic approach, as the sensitive skin experts to achieving naturally healthy-looking skin, inspired and created by ‘people like them’.

Creativity To start the conversation, Simple® recruited its audience’s number one YouTube star Zoella. Ideally placed to use her personal brand, Zoella helped produce videos that landed the Simple® sensitive skin message and called for young girls to join the movement, ultimately helping them have better skin days.

On Tumblr, Skin Social had to represent the language that teens were familiar with – a predominantly visual one. Teen-friendly content was created, predominantly GIFs, that were aesthetically pleasing but also delivered a bitesize piece of skincare advice. The brand was sensitive to its audience’s interests, striking a balance between educational and entertaining. The tips had to fit into the teens’ routines and the branded content had to feel natural, not pushy – leading them to the brand site at the end of the user journey but also providing genuine advice and value.