BEELIVE IN BEAUTY: Refresh & Co. x APIVITA
On June 6th, 2022, the Refresh & Co. team was able to finally announce and present our newest collaboration and annual campaign with our client APIVITA, called “BEELIEVE IN BEAUTY” which is based on the APIVITA Experience Store* in Athens,Greece. The main plan for this campaign was to advertise this unknown,unique service our client provides, as well as promote their important values of sustainability and ethical consumption, amongst others.
Who is APIVITA? (and their experience store)
Founded in Athens in 1979 by two pharmacists, APIVITA is a beauty and skincare company that offers effective natural beauty products for the face, body and hair.
They have a very specific brand — the company creates their formulas using the therapeutic and cosmetic effects of medicinal plants and, most importantly, bee products; which are its inspiration and main point of interest. In fact, the company’s name “APIVITA” comes from Latin and means the life (vita) of the bee (apis).
*The APITIVA Experience Store is the physical embodiment of APIVITA’s philosophy, its values and vision for a “greener” world. The visitors of the “experience store” have the opportunity to roam the store and experience the products first hand with their senses: smell, taste, hearing, sight, touch, etc. The exprerience inside the store can be divided into 6 areas: 1) The shopping area, 2) The beehive spa, 3) The hair studio, 4) The lecture hall, 5) The juice bee bar and 6) The nature’s pharmacy.
Why choose APIVITA as a client?
The Refresh & CO. ad agency team approached APIVITA for the purposes of creating a communication brief and with the goal to collaborate with them for the possible creation of an advertising campaign.
In general, we chose a partnership with APIVITA because we share a common ground in our values, which are focused of sustainability and responsible production & consumption. The company is very environmentally conscious, as it uses and creates products which come from nature itself — as such, they’re also cruelty-free (no product testing on animals) which is also included in our main values. Also, APIVITA is constantly making efforts to reduce its environmental footprint through the sustainable management of the resources it uses, the eco-friendly design of its products, and its environmental behavior, which affect their activities and the life cycle of their products, and create a positive environmental impact.
Communication Brief
Although our communication approach with APIVITA was unsuccessful, we opted to construct our own communication brief, based on our judgement and research of the company.
As such, the client requested a digital and in real life campaign around the APIVITA Experience Store*, which will hopefully be annual except specific holiday seasons. The main objective(s) and purpose are awareness, image and trust-building and activism; the company is looking to further advertise their experience store and reaffirm their authenticity & commitments in their products and their eco-conscious practises & appreciation of nature. The target groups are Greek people (mostly women) in the 30–45 years old age range, which is APIVITA’s usual target group, as well as in the 16–27 range to perhaps attract new and younger audiences — all of whom are interested in skincare and makeup. The customer benefits from the experience store by getting unique experiences specialized for and by APIVITA, and a real-life demonstration of the benefits and wonders of natural products.
Concept & Strategy
The concept for the creation of a digital advertising campaign for APIVITA came from the desire to reflect the Experience Store’s uniqueness and notion into its marketing, as well as an idea of interactive and creative advertising that could draw the attention of specific target groups. In addition, we thought that it’d be interesting to promote one of the least advertised parts & services of APIVITA — so, as an ad agency, we wish to make it more well known to the public.
The communication strategy includes the advertising campaign itself, as well as social media marketing and content marketing which support the campaign. Our goals, as an extension of the communication brief, was to:
- Make a connection between the concepts of responsible consumption, climate action, and ethical consumerism,
- Make the existence of the experience store known to the brand’s target group(s),
- Expand the brand’s target group and general presence in the skincare & beauty world.
BEELIEVE IN BEAUTY — with the APIVITA Experience Store
Following APIVITA’s past campaigns, advertising ideas and marketing concepts, we decided upon the name “BEELIEVE IN BEAUTY” for the campaign, implementing both the beauty aspect and the valuable bee symbolism and products of the company. Similiarly, the main message of the campaign is:
Beauty is not a face
Beauty is a place (in mind)
Bee beautiful
Bee responsible
For the main concept, we decided upon a mix of digital and tangible methods, since the campaign concerns the promotion of a physical store and, of course, taking into consideration the success and importance of digital advertising.
As such, we proposed that APIVITA will set strategic beauty spots throughout the city of Athens, where people can visit and learn all about the APIVITA Experience Store, about responsible consumption and climate action, and get the opportunity to try a sample of some of the products available in the store. These spots can be close to Sephora stores, as we plan to assist APIVITA in collaborating with them, as one of the most well-known brands in the beauty industry, which can support the completion of our set goals.
Every visit to these beauty spots rewards possible customers with a 20€ discount for purchases and services in the experience store, which will be distributed through technologies (in the form of a digital coupon), to avoid paper waste; as a way to implement APIVITA’s envrionmental values and the goals of the campaign.
In addition, there would be other kind of marketing, as part of the media strategy:
- Outdoor installations (OOH): Advertisements for the experience store will appear on bus stops and billboards located on buildings at certain trategically selected points in Athens, such as Syntagma Square.
- TV commercials: The creation of a TV advertisement which will consist of an actual (mini) tour inside the experience store with a narrative of its services & offers.
And most importantly…
- Social media & content marketing (as mentioned before): Specifically, the campaign will be distributed through Facebook, Instagram & TikTok, and will include the making of creative content, such as videos and posts promoting the beauty spots, sharing skincare tips & tricks, and advice on ethical consumption — with the hashtags #beebeautiful & #beeresponsible.
On our main social media channel on Instagram, we have already posted a few examples of how these posts might look like (mock-ups). Creative and educational content of this kind is great to promote any campaign like ours, as not only can it reach a targeted audience in a cost-effective way, but also can have a global reach, beyond our advertising of the Experience Store in Athens; and as such, promoting eco-conscious and ethical consumption practises in the beauty space, and encouraging these various aspects of sustainability both in beauty industries/brands and the consumers’ personal life.
In conclusion, in the process of creating this unique campaign with APIVITA, our team in Refresh & Co. gained valuable knowledge and experience in planning out these kinds of multimedia projects and advertising campaigns. In the future, we hope that this previous involvement with the BEELIEVE IN BEAUTY campaign will allow us to devise even better quality campaigns, projects and content with possible clients more swiftly, efficiently and comprehensively.
Tags: Betty Tsakarestou , Stelios Stiakakhs, Kylogotheti, Armaldaxotza, Danai, Nefeli Babe
