LUX has been a leading brand in the Japanese haircare market for a long time. They had been messaging out “beauty” as “gorgeous and glamourous hair” embodied by long-haired Hollywood celebrities, but the brand's position began to be threatened as the idea of respecting diverse values developed. LUX is now growing out of the stereotypical beauty standards and transforming into a brand which inspires people to appreciate their own beauty. Under this brand vision, we are taking on a challenge to liberate people from the stereotypes of how their hair should look, which Japanese people are unconsciously bound to. This time, we focused especially on the stereotype of businesspeople’s hair, and aimed to approach our main target, women in their 20s to 40s.

We focused on the company ID card photos as the most symbolic portrayal of the gap between our businessperson identity and our true self. IDs are something that identifies you, but the person you see on it is bound by the unconscious bias of typical business norms. By changing and liberating this ID photo from the stereotype, we allowed businesspeople to recognize that they had been blindly bound to the idea of how businesspeople should look, and by doing so, we believed that we could create a trigger to change society.

To maximize the news value of this project, we chose to take advantage of the time of year when businesspeople receive the most attention in Japan. The target date was April 3rd, when all new graduates start off their careers and many companies hold their welcoming ceremonies. Students who have been enjoying being their “true selves" will be faced with being a “businessperson” as a new employee, and how the companies welcome them also come into the spotlight on that day. We considered that delivering a message of liberation from the stereotype of businesspeople at this particular day would best attract people's attention. The main target was working women in their 20s to 40s. With the project tagline, "IDentify yourself, your true self,” we aimed to spread the idea to society through business media and signage in the business districts where many of these targeted women work.

April 3rd - When many companies hold their welcoming ceremonies and people's interest in businesspeople is at its highest, we placed newspaper ads on the front and the back of a single page with the visuals of the before and after of the actual scaled ID cards, highlighting the transformation of the ID photo. In addition, we took over the business districts with a series of short videos of ID cards. The ID photos start moving and changing their hair styles to express their true selves. Also, we asked for opinions on businesspeople’s hair on social media, creating a hashtag #RethinkBusinesspersonHairstyle. Furthermore, Unilever actually renewed their employees’ ID cards including board members and new employees. We did not let this project end up as an idea proposal to society, but we took it further by actually implementing it as tangible action.

・Covered by 3 TV programs, including Japan's national broadcast.

・Covered by 80+ web media.

・Over 7,000 organic tweets were posted with #RethinkBusinesspersonHairstyle and the topic was hotly debated.

・The follower size of LUX’s brand social media account grew to 130% in just a week.

・86% of Unilever’s employees who actually renewed their IDs said that they now feel proud of their working selves.

-We proved that people’s mind and confidence can be changed through a single card.