University Project
The Team: Keiani Allen, Jackson Kim, Maggie Li, and Anlan Wang
My Roles: Creative Director, Graphic Designer, and Copywriter
Brief: Create one campaign story for a non-luxury company that is translated across at least three communication platforms - Out-of-Home, Print, Digital, Social, Video, or Experiential
The Campaign
Glossier's popularity has remained stagnant since their controversies in 2020. We believe that their social good program, Glossier for Good, is underutilized and could be the key to revamping their social standing in the make-up world.
Beauty2theStreetz is a non-profit organization that serves the homeless population of Los Angeles, emphasizing the humanity, love, and connection the unhoused deserve.
For our campaign, we want Glossier to partner with Beauty2theStreetz to reimagine the visual and verbal language used to describe the unhoused.
Overview and Research
Overview by Maggie Li
Research by Anlan Wang
"Glossier believes in products 'inspired by real life.' Beauty 2 The Streets’ mission aligns strongly with this belief, and the nonprofit embodies the qualities of an organization that the Glossier Grant Program would invest in. With aligned values, the partnership between the two would have mutually beneficial outcomes. Beauty 2 The Streets would receive financial and product donations, media exposure, and scaling opportunities, while Glossier would be able to showcase an under-marketed social good initiative of the company, leveraging this to increase brand loyalty and engagement." - Maggie Li
Platform 1: Out-of-Home Advertisements
NYC
NYC
NYC
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Seattle
Seattle
Seattle
I designed and wrote the copy for the above Out-Of-Home Advertisements.
The concept of this campaign is to reimagine the visual and verbal language used to describe the homeless. In the design, I wanted to convey a sense of visual beauty with Glossier's signature close-up portrait photography and the motif of flowers.
For the copy, I wanted to focus changing the adjectives used when speaking about the unhoused population. Often, people describe the homeless as dirty, lazy, or even scary. Both Shirley Raines and the rest of our group believe that every human is deserving of respect, dignity, and the ability to feel good about themselves, so the copy of this campaign reflects that sentiment. Through our research, we discovered that affirmational beauty is an upcoming trend for 2024 so the copy reflects that as well.
Out-of-Home Strategy
For the placement of the campaigns, we chose Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City as these are the three cities with the highest homeless populations in the United States.
Each city has a set of 3 different Out-of-Home images, each reflecting the overall aesthetic of where they are placed. For example, New York City is more autumnal and moody while Los Angeles is pink, bright, and sunny.
Platform 2: Social Media (Instagram)
Social Media Strategy
As stated above, our social media strategy was to maintain Glossier's brand aesthetic while being thorough with the information we conveyed about the campaign and Shirley Raines' work.
Glossier's instagram features a lot of their signature close-up portrait photography as well as random aesthetic photographs of make-up and skincare products, campaign related ephemera, and some of their pop-up events.
For the copy, we kept Glossier's existing branding as well. Their captions are often formatted with a positive one-liner followed by a paragraph that goes into detail about the campaign, event, or product being advertised.
A play on Glossier's "YOU LOOK GOOD" tagline, the phrase "WE LOOK GOOD" appears in some of the copy, emphasizing the community aspect of Shirley Raines' work.
(The amazing Jackson Kim came up with the idea for "WE LOOK GOOD".)
All Instagram Posts
I designed the Instagram graphics and wrote the copy for all Instagram posts. Maintaining Glossier's current social media strategy is one of the main goals of the mock photography, design, and copy.
Platform 3: Experiential
Experiential Design by Jackson Kim
Product Packaging Design
At the pop-up truck events, there will be Glossier products for sale. To entice customers to purchase, we're offering limited edition packaging to match the floral campaign.
The cloud paint is one of Glossier's most iconic products. The box has a thick block of color at the top with minimal text in the white space.
My remix of this was to add flower illustrations to the front of the boxes, calling back to the flower motifs throughout the campaign. I also added copy on the back of the box that explains the partnership between Glossier and Beauty2theStreetz, the proceeds going to the non-profit organization, and a Beauty2theStreetz logo that matches the color of the cloud paint.
Mock-Up Packaging Designed by Keiani Allen (Me)
Experiential Walkthrough by Jackson Kim
Stickers and Free Flowers
Mock-Up Stickers Designed by Keiani Allen (Me)
As a part of the experiential pop-up event, a free flower and a small set of stickers will be given away with every purchase.
The stickers are designed to be fun and representative of the values of the campaign with copy like "You look good, Inside and Out" or "BE GOOD".
Community Outreach
Community Outreach by Jackson Kim
Summary
What Did I Learn from This Project?
From this project, I was able to expand my skills in creative direction and learn more about the process of creating advertising campaigns.
As copywriting is not one of my strongest skills, I'm glad I got to exercise that part of my brain and come up with taglines and social media copy that resonated with my professor and my peers in class.
I loved designing the graphics and social media portions for this campaign because it was a challenge in restraint. For a brand like Glossier that prides itself on being visually clean, I had to make sure that I kept the designs free of clutter and extra text. I'm very happy with how everything turned out!
Shoutout to my amazing group members: Jackson, Maggie, and Anlan! They made this project so much fun and I would love to work with them again sometime in the near future.
*I do not own the rights to the photographic images used in this campaign.*
