Social Media: LUSH vs. The Body Shop – Who Will Win?

As a fan of both LUSH and The Body Shop products, I was intrigued to come across an article written by Market Sentinel on a study comparing the social media success of the two health and beauty companies:

 To give a bit of a background, The Body Shop and LUSH are comparable in many ways. With similar product offerings, similar philosophies of ethical sourcing, no testing on animals, and environmentally friendly production techniques, The Body Shop is a formidable competitor and trumps LUSH in terms of size and scale.[1]

However, The Body Shop faced severe backlash from consumers when L’Oreal acquired the company in 2006. Their customers did not see a fit in The Body Shop’s “Against Animal Testing” positioning with controversy claims of L’Oreal testing their products on animals.

Looking at the real-life example above, there is a noticeable difference in terms of tone and engagement used by the two companies. LUSH matches their quirky and genuine brand personality by keeping their offline and online images consistant with seemingly real customer engagement and interactivity. By simply commenting “it’s a busy morning here in Lush”, and asking about other readers’ days, Lush managed to generate 44 likes.

In contrast, The Body Shop’s facebook post seems rigid, pre-fabricated, and corporate in comparison. By keeping up “real” conversations and generating engaging discussions about the brand with real consumers, Lush managed to generate 250 comments with the prompt: “wonder what you would do if you had control of the Lush factory for the day?”:

LUSH on facebook
To sum it up, the moral of the story here is for companies to veer away from tempting mass-produced and pasted messages, and to hire social media PR who seem to genuinely care about their customers and take the time to engage in real conversations and discussions with their consumers.

 

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