New Lush campaign shines a light on staff

Jo-Anne Hui-Miller

24th Jun 2020

Lush is putting their employees front and centre of their latest digital campaign, Behind the Sticker, featuring interviews and profiles of their team members and sharing their stories with customers.

“Being a retail-led business, our retail staff are at the heart of a lot of what we do,” said Jay Jennings, Lush’s brand communications manager. “However, we do have huge amounts of passion and a lot of wonderful people who make up the more unseen part of the business.”

The campaign is also a nod to the ‘Easter Egg-like’ stickers on Lush products, which feature the name and image of the individual who made the product. When the stickers are peeled back, customers can find a fun message from the brand.

“We’ll be doing a series of staff profiles on our social media channels. It might be a casual staff member who’s new, then it might be someone from customer care who’s been with us for a long time, and even staff from our digital fulfilment area, where they pick and pack all the online orders,” explained Jennings.

“We have so many wonderful personalities who love our message and what we’re all about and we’re so proud to have a workforce like that. We wanted to highlight that.”

Some of the team members who will be showcased in the new campaign work at the Lush Kitchens in western Sydney, where they concoct fragrant and colourful bath bombs, shower gels and skincare products every day. As Lush has been working with the Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown, Sydney for a number of years, some of the staff at the Lush Kitchens are also asylum seekers and refugees.

“They’re a great organisation and we have such a diverse and wonderful workforce in our manufacturing facility with their assistance, which has been really fulfilling,” noted Jennings.

Lush is well-known for promoting their employees and shining a light on them during their campaigns. In fact, the brand very rarely uses third-party modelling agencies, instead focusing on sharing the stories and faces of their teams. For example, in the lead-up to the marriage equality vote Lush published interviews and photos of some of their LGBTQIA staff explaining why voting ‘yes’ was so important to them and their community. It’s also common for the brand to feature non-airbrushed photos of their retail staff in shop windows in new product campaigns.

“It’s a part of our DNA and we’re so proud to feature our staff like that,” said Jennings.

A return to human connection

As a brand that is well-known for offering customers an interactive and highly sensorial in-store experience, reopening stores has been a challenge, said Jennings although the Lush Lens app has been helping customers gain a better understanding of products without the need to touch and feel. Through the app, customers can view pricing, ingredients as well as video demonstrations.

While engagement and connection with customers has been difficult as people have been in isolation, Jennings said the Behind the Sticker campaign aims to remind customers of the human side of the business.

“We really pride ourselves on being such a human brand and our in-store experience and shop staff are known for being warm and welcoming,” he explained.

“We’re really putting a focus on bringing that human element back to our brand and showing that while our shops might have been closed or people are isolating, we’re still a group of real passionate people who are bringing these products to life.”