biotherm reveals the beauty of bare skin

How do you stand out in a market saturated with skincare products all promising to heal and protect women's skin using science and nature? By really standing by your product.

Skin needs oxygen to get healthy, so if Biotherm really was committed to caring for your skin, they wouldn't want you suffocating it under layers of makeup every day. 

So we challenged women to pledge one day a week to letting their skin breathe.

By signing the pledge, women publicly declared their commitment to letting skin breathe. We also gave them the opportunity to nominate friends not only to boost engagement, but to ensure they stuck with it.

We also made it easy to check in online when not wearing makeup, and reinforced the desire to let skin be skin with live stats showing how much following the pledge was improving the overall health of their complexion.

A leaderboard injected a little healthy competition into the event, while public reactions let everyone, including brothers, boyfriends and guy buddies celebrate natural beauty. 

We helped women stay accountable by letting them alert friends when keeping the pledge. And since most people don't want to download yet another app, we made it easy to save the mobile site as a smart phone icon for quick access. 

Participants unlocked rewards for various achievements like skipping makeup twice in a row, daring to go public without makeup, and organizing events with other pledges.

And for those still worried about the idea of going without makeup, we made it easy to consult with our BioLab Advisors, experts who can recommend the products that can give users the confidence to all natural.

In the end we showed Biotherm that we don't need expensive prizes or costly media buys to get noticed when we have a cause our target can have fun getting behind with friends. A cause that shifts the perception of skincare as a supplement to makeup to a potential substitute. 

This became the 1st place interactive category entry for the 2011 National Advertising Awards. It won me a trip to Cannes and led me on my career journey from Toronto, my childhood home, to Boston, New York City and now LA.

National Advertising Awards, Interactive, 1st Place