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.
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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.
And, of course, they're right. Granted, a company may do other things along the way to making a profit -- create jobs, for example, or make quality products -- but when you come right down to it, business is about making money. The more the better. And employees know it. You can argue that this is just reality, and if employees don't like it, well, that's too damn bad. But it's hard to deny how tough it can be to get anyone very excited about generating profits for someone else.
Many companies attack the problem with equity participation or incentive programs. The Body Shop does all that, too. But such techniques almost always have a catch-22. They work by focusing employees' attention on the very thing that causes the difficulty to begin with: the goal of corporate profitability. It's not that employees don't want their company to be profitable. It's that they don't really care very much. In fact, most of them probably feel pretty much as Anita does. "The idea of business, I'd agree, is not to lose money," she says. "But to focus all the time on profits, profits, profits -- I have to say I think it's deeply boring."
Therein lies the crux of the problem. To vast numbers of employees, profits are boring, even if they get a piece of the action. What's more, everything else a company does becomes boring insofar as its real purpose is to maximize profits.
So how does The Body Shop get around this one? It takes more or less the same approach that it uses with customers. It attacks cynicism with information, creating an elaborate system that deluges its employees with newsletters, videos, brochures, posters, training programs, and so on. In this case, however, The Body Shop focuses on teaching its employees that while profits may be boring, business doesn't have to be.
Consider employee training. The Body Shop's training center is its school for employees, located in London. The admissions policy is somewhat unusual in that anyone in the company, including franchisees and their employees, can attend for free. What's more unusual, however, is the school's curriculum. For all the emphasis The Body Shop places on the training, there is virtually no attention paid to making money, or even to selling. The courses for shop personnel, for example, are almost entirely devoted to instruction in the nature and uses of the products. That means everything from Herbal Hair and Problem Skin to Aromatherapy II (Advanced). It's as if McDonald's were to offer free classes in Grades of Beef and Nutrition Counseling to every kid who flips burgers throughout the chain.
