The agency has collaborated with Sephora to design five offline digital touchpoints that aim to engage customers through digital enablers such as AI-powered recommendations, virtual try-ons, Beauty Advisor WeCom, and an omnichannel wishlist/purchase option. These touchpoints are designed to provide an end-to-end customer experience, even after they leave the store.

The central creative concept behind this is refraction. The idea is that light helps detect and refracts the layers of information, enabling you to understand your skin better. Light is subtle and warm and helps humans perceive data and science in an approachable way. It can help detect and present your current skin condition in an illuminating way.

A facial scanning device is used to analyze a customer’s skin condition, including pigment levels, pore depth, and uneven surfaces. This analysis generates a detailed report that includes a score, areas that need improvement, and specific product recommendations tailored to the individual user.

The five touchpoints design project began in March 2022 and was completed in 12 weeks. This involved creating a visual direction, identifying use cases, functions, and features, prototyping, and conducting end-user validation and testing. The development and production phase took 9-12 months to work with 3 AI vendors and three hardware partners, including testing and store implementation. The flagship store in Nanjing opened in July 2023, with plans to scale to other cities across China.

The store launch received strong media coverage, garnering over 110K engagements in the first month. 2,241 media clips were shared across Chinese social media, and 6.97 billion impressions were made across Xiao Hong Shu, WeChat Mini Program, Weibo and Douyin channels.