This Woman Has Changed Business Forever

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These policies reflect more than Anita's personal feelings and beliefs, however. They form the basis of the company's marketing strategy. That strategy begins with the premise that standard marketing techniques are increasingly ineffective. Consumers are hyped out. They have been overmarketed. The din of advertising and promotion has grown so loud they can no longer tell one pitch from another. Meanwhile, they are becoming more cynical about the whole process. They have heard too many half-truths, or untruths, from companies trying to move product. It doesn't matter if your particular company has wonderful products and is absolutely truthful in its marketing. Consumers have reached the point where they mistrust whatever they hear from anyone with something to sell.

All of which poses an enormous marketing challenge. How does a company cut through that cynicism and establish credibility with customers?

That's where the information comes in. The Body Shop establishes credibility with its customers by educating them. It tells them everything there is to know about its products: where they come from, how they're made, what's in them, how they're tested, and what they can be used for. It does all this, moreover, with a light touch, using anecdotes, humor, videos, and bright graphics. Few customers suspect they're in a classroom, but that doesn't keep them from learning.

Suppose, for example, that a customer is concerned about safety, as well she might be in buying a product that is applied to the skin. In this case, safety is intimately connected to product development. Most major cosmetics companies develop their products in laboratories. They must then test each product's safety by conducting extensive experiments on animals. The Body Shop, on the other hand, develops its products from ingredients that either are natural or have been used by humans for decades, if not centuries. Through brochures in the shops, it explains to customers in great detail not only what it does, but what it doesn't do -- including animal testing. It reinforces the point by marking each container "Not Tested on Animals." It thus turns a basic consumer issue -- safety -- into a powerful tool for differentiating its products.

Similarly, The Body Shop uses information about ingredients to differentiate its products. The label on the Rhassoul Mud Shampoo, for example, notes that it is made from "a traditional Moroccan Mud from the Atlas Mountains . . . which has astringent and toning properties." To find such ingredients, Anita travels to the ends of the earth. Several times a year she visits remote areas of Third World countries, where she observes local customs and talks with native people about their methods of skin and hair care. The ideas she gets are incorporated into Body Shop products. Not coincidentally, her trips also produce the information that is used to educate customers in the shops.

All of this information has a cumulative effect. Customers get the message that they can find out anything they care to know about the way the company does business. They can also learn about other cultures, about environmental issues, about social problems -- the teaching just won't quit.

"I've just taken what every good teacher knows," says Anita, who is herself a former teacher. "You try to make your classroom an enthralling place. When I taught history, I would put brilliant graphics all around the room and play music of the period we were studying. Kids could just get up, walk around, and make notes from the presentation. It took me months to get it right, but it was stunning. Now, I'm doing the same thing. There is education in the shops. There are anecdotes right on the products, and anecdotes adhere. So I've really gone back to what I know how to do well."

As a marketing strategy, moreover, the approach is extremely effective. It cuts through the cynicism of consumers. It clearly differentiates the company from its major competitors. And it creates significant problems for would-be copycats, who can't easily duplicate the level of information that The Body Shop offers. In short, it provides all of the classic marketing benefits that conventional techniques are increasingly incapable of delivering.

More to the point, it does all that by humanizing the company. Customers feel that they are buying from a company whose values and business practices they know. The effect is to create a loyalty that goes beyond branding. Customers actively promote the company and its products to their friends, and this word of mouth fuels growth. Meanwhile, The Body Shop has yet to spend a dime (or a shilling) on advertising. Indeed, it does not even have a marketing department -- in an industry that is as marketing intensive as any on the face of the earth.

So what happens to the money that would ordinarily be spent on marketing? As it turns out, a large chunk of it is used to do for employees exactly what the company does for its customers.

* * *

The Boredom Factor

Motivating the hyped-out employee

The Body Shop approaches its employees with pretty much the same assumptions that it has about its customers. The operating premise is that people who work for corporations are hyped out. Companies have come up with all kinds of clever techniques for inspiring a work force: compensation and benefit plans, motivational seminars, training programs, you name it. They don't work, or at least they aren't as effective as they once were. As cynical as consumers have become, employees are even more so. It doesn't matter how much you insist that you are committed to their welfare. It doesn't even matter if you believe it. Employees simply don't buy the argument that companies are in business to make their lives better.

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Bo Burlingham

Burlingham joined Inc. in 1983. An editor at large, he is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. The book was a finalist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2006. Burlingham is also the co-author with Norm Brodsky of The Knack; and the co-author with Jack Stack of The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome.

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