Spreading a message of sustainability for the premier salon beauty brand Davines.
Davines was started in 1983 by the Bollati family in Parma, Italy, where all their beauty and haircare products are developed, tested and manufactured to be sold in salons. An industry pioneer in sustainability, ethical sourcing, and regenerative organic agriculture, Davines has been a B Corp since 2016. Their entire business is carbon neutral. They use organic ingredients selected from local farmers and cooperatives for their products. They even resuscitated a legacy local tomato variety that was thought to be extinct, and used its extracts in their formulary.
We helped Davines shatter its €100M sales milestone in North America, its best-performing market, with total 2023 beauty sales up 14.3% since 2022. How? By creating a brand platform that used Davines’s existing sustainability practices as its pillar.
Salon owners and devoted consumers already loved Davines products. They just didn’t know the whole story.
So we partnered with Someoddpilot to reinvigorate the Davines brand presence in North America so we could spread the word. (Organically, of course).
Evoking the Science and Lore of Nature
We began by immersing ourselves in everything Davines, starting with the science behind their products and sustainability practices. We studied organic restorative agriculture, biodiversity studies, and local terrain maps showing what ingredients were produced in which regions and why.
Poring over manifesto documents and past campaigns, we learned about carbon sequestration and Italy’s “slow food” movement. Our team spent hours with the family members who had run the business for the last four decades. They used organic ingredients selected from local farmers and cooperatives. They even saved a legacy backyard tomato variety that was thought to be extinct, and used its extracts in their formulary.
We learned that their mission amounted to more than a message, a tagline or a slogan. Their commitment ran Earth-deep.
Illustrating Beauty through Life
By juxtaposing nature and young people, we described a synthesis between carefully cultivated ingredients and the vitality of humanity, the essence of Grow Beautiful. With Davines, the viewer is on a journey of becoming, stripping away whatever is extraneous and unnecessary in order to become closer to themselves, to nature, to true beauty.
Introducing Product
as a Natural Element
Extending the connection between beauty and the natural world, Davines product was shown in the context of its organic and sustainable ingredients, treated as another element of nature. Vines, grapes and foliage share space with shampoo bottles and vibrant hair. Visuals blur the boundaries between people, nature and product.
Bringing Grow Beautiful to Life
Sustain Beauty / Grow Beautiful took shape in video, social and OOH as a clarion call to action, a declaration of intent, a simple yet powerful statement of where Davines stood. The values that Davines cultivated (and its audience shared) were now more tightly connected to the brand than ever, and integrated with the efficacy of their products through new site-wide messaging.
Davines Grows (Even More) Beautiful
After the initial campaign, Davines extended Sustain Beauty / Grow Beautiful deeper into their brand presence and site, making it an ongoing badge of the brand’s commitment to sustainability. They extended their partnership with the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the regenerative organic agriculture movement. Davines even debuted a limited-edition hair and body wash bar made from 99.7% biodegradable ingredients and packaged in 100% recyclable paper, dubbed “a manifesto in product form,” along with a video recommitting to their Earth-friendly goals.
With total beauty sales up 14.3% since 2022, Davines is set to continue surpassing its own milestones in the North American market, nourished with organic sustainability as its North Star.