There has been much talk over the last couple of years about non-binary gender choices and increased gender fluidity, and as a result many brands have rushed into this growing trend amongst Gen Z audiences.

Whilst quite rightly there is an increased sense of acceptance of more diverse lifestyle choices, when it comes to the psychology of shopping, the vast majority of men shop quite differently from women. Especially in the beauty and well-being categories.

It may be the fact that historically, women have been shopping for beauty products, and so they have developed a broader lexicon and deeper understanding of the ingredients, benefits and importance of beauty regimes.

Conversely, one of the biggest growth areas in the category is male grooming. According to Euromonitor, sales of grooming products for men in the UK grew by 3% in 2016, and across the country men now spend collectively a whopping £1.7bn on beauty products.

As a result of the selfie generation’s interest in personal appearance, or simply an overall increased interest in wellness, the male grooming category is booming. But for most guys, it’s still a bit of a mystery.

Assembly, Estée Lauder

So, we set out on the streets of London to interview guys about their grooming attitudes, habits and preferences. We spoke to men in South, East and Central London to hear directly from them what things they look for when they are shopping for grooming products, and what Estée Lauder could do to facilitate their engagement with the category.

We learned that for the broad franchise of male consumers, talking about grooming isn’t the easiest of conversations. And that although the overwhelming majority of men do want to look their best, they also don’t want to come across as if they are trying too hard.

Men often lack a vocabulary around products in this category and want brands to make it easy for them to achieve their goals. They want to know more, but don’t want to be told. They want to discover for themselves. Based on these insights, it became clear that our main challenge was going to be breaking down the barriers to the category and encouraging self-exploration amongst our audience.

The Idea

According to Elodie Bohuon, Selfridges beauty buyer, another reason behind the surge in interest in male grooming is the adoption of a more male-friendly branding by the brands targeted at men.

So, rather than searching for the ever-elusive modern-day metrosexuals – how many of them do you know – we decided to entice the broader audience of guys that probably don’t quite know what they want, definitely wouldn’t know what to look for, and may be slightly embarrassed to ask. All of whom are style-conscious men who want to look good and feel great.

Our mission was to change the way these guys relate to male grooming by telling them everything they ever wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.

So, we’ve dialed up the information and knowledge to give them a vernacular chiming with their everyday, breaking down barriers and borders to make access easy, and interaction obvious. We aimed at creating an all day, everyday destination that could be absorbed into the lives of our target consumers and allowed them to navigate the grooming category at their own pace.

The result

The result of that is Assembly, an umbrella-brand which houses multiple other Estée Lauder brands selling beauty products for male consumers. We created the brand positioning, strategy and naming, the visual identity, brand world and a scalable retail environment for the brand. The name references both the simplicity and graphic nature of flat pack assembly guides. The wordmark is functional, bold and simple whilst the missing sections in the wordmark suggest the process is not yet complete.

The collaterals created always attempted to visualise and simplify the process, whilst still looking stylish, clean and modern. To conclude the design process, we created a very bold, graphic guideline document in all black and white for maximum impact. Assembly is currently being rolled out across the UK, from experiential to concessions.

Image by McDonalds

June is Pride Month (in honour of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which first sparked the gay rights movement). For a long time, the month has been closely associated with Pride parades, rainbow flags and LGBTQ rights. However, in recent years, June has also become the month when brands push LGBTQ-themed marketing campaigns.

While LGBTQ-targeted campaigns have been around for some time, it feels like most brands have now lost fear of expressing their views on social matters, and are letting go of unauthentic pink-washing to come out in full support for the community – from McDonalds’ rainbow French fry boxes, to Coca-Cola’s 2017 ‘Pool Boy’ commercial.

The list is long: Instagram has rolled out a special set of Pride features, including a rainbow brush; Equinox is exploring the LGBTQ-alphabet (it seems a lot of people get confused with the acronym); Just Salad has released its LGBTQ-themed ‘Big Gay Garden Salad’, and there are plenty of others.

Below you’ll find three of what we think are some of the most interesting LGBTQ-themed campaigns this year.

Coca-Cola (Brazil)

Brazilians (not all of them!) have long used the phrase ‘Essa coca é Fanta’, which can be translated into ‘This coke is actually Fanta’, to pejoratively question someone’s sexual orientation. So in a very clever move, Coca-Cola decided to leverage the popular saying to promote diversity and LGBTQ pride.

It has replaced the liquid inside cans of coke with Fanta, and challenged consumers with the following message written on packaging: ‘This coke is actually Fanta. So what?’.

The campaign was first trialed internally with employees, but it has gained so much traction due to so many people sharing photos of cans on social media platforms, as well all the PR it has received, that Coca-Cola is rolling out the campaign across the entire country, and may adapt it to other markets too.

Image by Coca-Cola Brasil

Skittles (UK)

While the majority of brands were busy finding ways to incorporate rainbows into their branding, Skittles has stood out by abandoning its usual rainbow look and adopting an all-white alternative in celebration of Pride. The idea was that in June, there’s only one rainbow that truly matters.

The limited-edition Skittles has taken over social media, with lots of people reacting by saying they’ve loved the initiative, and that they were also having fun trying to guess the actual flavours of the white lentils inside the pack.

Image by Skittles UK

Barba Men’s Grooming Boutique (USA)

Hair salons have always been some of the most LGBTQ-friendly public spaces. This year, US-based men’s grooming shop Barba has decided to show support for transgender men and women: during Pride month, customers wanting to help in raising awareness for the community could get their hair dyed blue, pink and white (the colours of the transgender flag) for free – even Marc Jacobs took advantage of the offer.

We find this campaign very interesting because of its amplification potential which goes far beyond social media – customers not only shared photos of their new hairstyle on their own channels (which helped raising awareness for both the transgender community and the salon), but also strolled around for days showcasing, as well as talking about the initiative to everyone who’s asked.

Image by Barba Men’s Grooming Boutique

Our Creative Director, Phil Heys, took a day trip to Paris on the Eurostar recently, with no agenda other than some glorified window shopping to see what’s going on with our Gallic neighbours.

Armed only with a list from our resident Parisian Socialite, Philippine, a camera, a Paris-themed playlist, and a (shopping) assistant (wife), here are some highlights:

…

Skipped past Galeries Lafayette, too big and scary on my tight timeline, however they did have some nice minimal window designs.

First up Citadium, in the 9th arrondissement, which is four floors dedicated to street wear and sneakers. All the big guys are here, and there are a few nice touches.

The Converse sneaker tree, a love letter to their all star hi tops, Nikes orange compactus storage units, and Pull and Bears cut away camper van, were the memorable bits of furniture. Big surprises and wow moments were thin on the ground though, and it’s a pretty mainstream experience, showing how far streetwear has come over the last few years.

Suggested headphone music to browse Citadium with:

Fresh – Daft Punk

Galeries Lafayette

Citadium

Citadium

Next up Colette. I had big expectations for this one, usually one of the first places on the lips for retail experience in Paris. It was a bit like shopping at the Design Museum. Everything was laid out just so, with assistants meticulously measuring the distance between items to ensure each is given its respectful breathing space. Every product had been perfectly selected to be the coolest looking ‘whatever it was’ you could buy.

The security staff, however, looked like they’d all overslept, mistakenly dressed in their Grandads suit, and couldn’t find their shoes, so stuck on a pair of shell toes!

Suggested headphone music to browse Colette with:

Anything by Serge Gainsbourg (No idea what he’s singing about, but it sounds really sexy and cool!)

Colette

Colette

Last in the battle of the departments stores was Merci. Merci is located in the Haut-Marais district, and was established by Bernard and Marie-France Cohen. You walk in via what seems to be a small quiet book store, but pass down the book lined corridor and it opens out a large open light warehouse space. The central area had blue painted wall, and was dressed like a swimming pool, in the courtyard was an inflatable flamingo sitting on a retro Fiat 500. This had a super chilled, almost thrift stores vibe, but with a really well curated product range. The kind of stuff that you don’t get in too many other stores, and it feel like a great find. Its where we (my assistant) spent our money!

Suggested music to browse Merci on your headphones with:

Paris Match – The Style Council

Merci

Merci

Other Highlights

Some other spots worth noting:

Maison Popeille

34 Place du Marché Saint-Honore

75001 Paris, France

Specialists in preserved, tinned fish, and punk wines

Deyrolles

Deyrolles

Has to be seen to be believed taxidermist

https://www.deyrolle.com/

Wine By One

Wine By One

http://www.winebyone.com/

Self serve wine bar using credited swipe cards

UBER

Sorted us right out after a row with the guy from the train station rank!

This week Stuart Wood, Founding Partner of Missouri Creative was speaking at the Retail Design Expo on the subject of The Benefits of Experiential Retail. It was a lively debate hosted by Kantar TNS with other panelists from the worlds of shopper marketing and digital installations.

Here are 7 key take-outs for successful experiential retail:

1. Understand the objectives

Obvious stuff but vital to understanding how to design, implement and measure the results. Creating awareness, building consideration, triggering purchase, developing advocacy? All valid objectives, but identifying what you want to achieve is fundamental to quantifying its success.

2. The best experiences connect the dots

Building the emotional connection between the product or brand, the audience and the context is crucial to creating relevant experiences that educate, entertain or inspire the shopper. Understand the difference between Doing the shopping vs Going shopping.

3. Digital not for digital’s sake

When you own a hammer the whole world looks like a nail! Consider carefully the use of technology – just because everyone’s talking about it, it doesn’t always mean it’s the answer. But if you do; make it seamless, make it relevant. And make sure it works.

4. The power of the senses

Never underestimate the power of the physical experience. The touch, the smell and the simple beauty of the design can immerse the shopper in your world. Just think of the experiential power of Aesop skincare brand in retail – the tactility and visceral nature of the products and the seductiveness of the space combine to deliver an experience that customers keep coming back to.

5. Sweat the asset

Ask any retailer what their two largest costs are and you’ll hear “Rent and Staff”. We believe we will see an increase in multiple use spaces, at different times of day, across the retail landscape; book clubs in coffee shops, yoga classes in gym-wear stores and bread making classes in bakeries. You’ll engage the staff in something they already love and inspire your customers with possibilities.

6. Social shopping

Shopping is a social activity and competes with any other leisure activity. Consider what the visual or experiential mnemonic is. Make it shareable and shoppers will share it. Never say “No photos here!”. Again, look at the staff – in Missouri’s recent work with Snow+Rock we made the Instagram feeds of the staff a vital ingredient in the content displayed in-store. They are already actively engaged with your brand and can be the best advocates you have.

7. Justifying the cost of experiential

I would say look at the cost of not doing it. Recent reports say that engaged shoppers spend up to 60% more per transaction and ¾ of shoppers are loyal to brands that provide great experiences for their customers, the cost of not creating contextually relevant, culturally connected experiences seems to us like an opportunity missed.

Branding diversity is not a new idea, but it takes guts to do it nowadays.

For years brands have proudly championed values of multiculturalism and equality, and tried to make such beliefs central to what they represent. But recent developments in politics, coupled with growing resentment towards multi-national corporations and their visions of a globalised world are now testing brands’ willingness to stand up to their beliefs.

We have recently seen two Sharing Economy giants, Uber and Airbnb, become part of debate on social media for their stance on the ‘Muslim-ban’ proposed by President Trump.

#DeleteUber trended on multiple social media platforms when Uber didn’t join NYC yellow cab drivers in a protest, and Lyft – a main competitor in the USA – became one of the most downloaded apps in the App store. Uber faced further criticism because its CEO was part of the president’s economic advisory board – he stepped down due to public pressure, just to end up facing criticism from Trump supporters for doing it.

Airbnb on the other hand, has been praised by how it handled the same issue; it engaged its global community of hosts to support everyone affected by the ban, and is now rolling out a larger campaign to continue to champion its belief in a world without barriers (#WeAccept), which included a 30-second Super Bowl spot.

Their goal is to offer short-term housing for 100,000 people in need in the next five years.

2017 is likely to put more brands in the same situation; some have already started to reassess their stance in socio-economic matters. But there is a vast array of articles and studies from which to learn about Millennial and Gen Z consumers’ preference for brands with strong values.

IBM has changed its logo in protest against anti-LGBT legislation in the United States

So it gets down to a matter of long-term versus short-term vision; should brands forget equity that has taken time, money and effort to build and act impulsively, or do they stand up to their beliefs and values and aim at building a legion of loyal fans from a next generation of consumers?

We stand with brands such as IBM and Airbnb.