February 14, 2024 - 1:10pm
Much has been made of the catchphrase “go woke go broke”, but what happens when companies go broke because they are not actually woke enough? This seems to be the case with The Body Shop, a high street skincare and beauty retailer, which has now gone into administration.
Founded in 1976, The Body Shop was once a trailblazing pioneer of ethical, cruelty-free business, built on values of environmental conscience and social justice. Its founder Anita Roddick championed “inclusive beauty” with an ad campaign centred on a full-figured doll called Ruby; she put photos of missing people on the sides of her delivery trucks; and in 1991 she led a petition with over four million signatures to stop animal testing.
Yet now The Body Shop is another victim of the TikTokification of the beauty industry. Beauty trends are now just a swipe rather than a shopping trip away, and The Body Shop failed to connect with new customers or position itself to a new generation who discover their favourite products on social media. The modern-day ubiquity of “Body Shop values” also means that the business lost its unique selling point; “sustainable”, “eco-friendly” and “green” are no longer just buzzwords but industry standards. As more and more businesses joined the clean, natural and ethical brigade, The Body Shop simply could not compete against more online-facing brands such as Aesop, Glossier, Sephora, e.l.f. and The Ordinary.
But what is really more important to younger audiences: being vegan, or being viral? Members of Generation Z are often hailed as more sustainable, eco-conscious consumers, but the reality is a lot more complicated. Research by McKinsey suggests that the cost-of-living crisis has eroded Gen Z’s willingness to purchase sustainable products, and that all age groups prioritise price, quality and convenience instead. Another survey found that the group is more likely than any other generation to place value in low costs over an environmentally-friendly product.
Much is made of Gen Z members’ strong moral values, but their concerns about climate change and social justice don’t always translate into purchasing behaviours. They are voracious consumers of fast-fashion brands with deeply unethical practices (there is a whole TikTok sub-genre of “clothing hauls”, where content creators show off their recent purchases, many of which are never worn or thrown away after one use). Zoomers are travelling (and flying) more than previous generations; they are the least likely generation to recycle; and while 60% say a brand’s sustainability is important to them, only 20% actively seek out that information.
This cognitive dissonance is a problem for brands like The Body Shop, which can’t compete with online retailers on price points but are not quite valued enough that consumers can justify the premium. For example, from 2021 The Body Shop launched refill stations in hundreds of its stores, which may have appealed to people’s social sensibilities, but not their price-sensitive pockets. The company tried other initiatives: discontinuing face wipes, expanding its refill programme to make-up, creating a Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill. Yet nothing beats the cult of convenience, or the lure of a celebrity influencer gushing about a beauty product whilst simultaneously using filters, ring lights and other editing tools. High-street brands don’t stand a chance.
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SubscribeSeems social justice obsessions are only skin deep.
Quite a good choice of words for an article about a cosmetics brand. I like what you did there!
Oh, Body Shop…happy memories of splashing on way too much White Musk/Vanilla eau de toilette before getting the school bus. the last thing I bought from there was a body butter thing about 20 years ago. It was greasy and expensive and I don’t think I’ve ever been back in one of their shops since.
If I want a body care treat, it’s Rituals for me. I just love their entire concept.
It has always had the very best eye make up remover! Gentle non harming and effective. The only thing I have consistently bought for the last 35 yrs.
From my own small observations, the 15-20s are not into woke at all. Like Covid, the woke mind-virus has hit older people hard. It has inflicted maximum damage on those in their 40s-50s. I mean, those are the ones with institutional power right now; and they are also the ones hell-bent on fatally undermining those very same institutions.
That’s been my experience too. I was teaching 15 and 16 year olds last year and they just rolled their eyes when the school announced it would be holding Inclusivity Day. One of my students actually asked me why the school gives so much attention to ‘those people’ meaning LGBQT. It’s my experience that Woke ideology is considered a boring old people thing among the young.
This could indicate a more balanced outlook is on its way back with just a few more years.
I wish this was the case. But what I think is happening here is reacting against finger wagging. It comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. Not to say that there aren’t thinking kids out there, there are. But if you shove too much stuff down a young person’s throat, they will simply vomit it back.
God willing : )
Much is made of Gen Z members’ strong moral values, but their concerns about climate change and social justice don’t always translate into purchasing behaviours. — It’s okay; you can say it out loud. People within this group are quick to engage in moral preening, at best, and rank hypocrisy at worst. Which makes them very much like any other group of individuals who talk a big game but do not necessarily walk their talk.
yes or alternatively we might see this as a cause to reflect that the image presented on social media and in the right-wing press is actually an unfaithful parody designed to appeal to our prejudices.
“the right-wing press.” Sure, that’s the problem. It’s never the virtue crowd, just the people noticing how often the crowd’s actions fail to keep up with the rhetoric.
Every generation has an ultra-progressive vanguard, but one of the key differences for Gen Z is that their ultra-progressive vanguard has access to social media.
So their positions are disproportionately amplified, shifting the Overton Window on what it is acceptable for Gen Z to say and appearing to define the whole of Gen Z to those of us outside thhis cohort. With instant online – and sometimes IRL – punishment for those who dissent.
Thus we end up in a place of cognitive dissonance where it has never been more important to performative express the right opinions, even if the majority of the cohort don’t actually act in accordance with those opinions.
Nice to see the idiom being done correctly. “Walk the walk” is irritating.
Cringe.
Having ethical products and ideology should not be conflated with being ‘woke’, these are entirely different concepts.
Some interesting observations on consumer behaviour just about saves the article however.
Fair comment for sure. Enviro conscious companies have been around a lot longer than woke.
Yes a very strange line because the rest of the article did not then support the not woke enough conclusion. It is clear from the article that Body Shop has gone bust because it had become noncompetitive. Nothing new there and it would seem a lot of the article is simply there to make a totally unremarkable event seem more remarkable.
The EU, sorry but it’s true, stopped people being able to bring back their bottles for a cheap refill. That almost single-handedly killed their model and image stone-dead and they have been attempting corporate CPR ever since.
“They are voracious consumers of … brands with deeply unethical practices”
So, just like their parents then ? And what of it ? Is this the kind of try hard froth that UnHerd is reduced to publishing now ?
No mention of the Body Shop alienating its core customer base – middle aged women who know that sex is real.
https://twitter.com/TheBodyShop/status/1270773993109434373?s=19
Proselytizing to sell products and services is annoying.