YoungShand and Unconditional Skincare Co. Launches World-first Skin Peace Pledge

Dry, oily, sensitive, too red, too wrinkly, too freckly, not clear enough. Not enough. This is how women have been conditioned to think about their skin. One in two women surveyed as part of the Skin Confidence Survey undertaken by Unconditional Skincare Co. said they felt bombarded with unrealistic beauty messages. One in three said these messages affect their self-esteem.*

So, when YoungShand took on the challenge of launching the new skincare brand developed by Blis Technologies – global probiotic pioneers – they knew there was an opportunity to kick start a conversation with women about more than just their choice of skincare products.

Starting with the brand name, Unconditional Skincare Co. was developed by the YoungShand team from the understanding that your skin is enough and that skin isn't 'good' or 'bad' but simply out of balance. Something that goes against many things women have been conditioned to believe about 'skin types' and 'problem skin'. 

"Fifteen years of research into skin probiotics has proven that the solution to healthy skin lies in the microbiome – not elsewhere. And all skin has the potential to be it's healthy best when nurtured with the support of live probiotics", says Julie Curphey, chief marketing officer at Blis Technologies

Everything from the brand's name to the tone of voice, design identity and packaging has been developed to encourage women to look at their skin in a new way - as the solution, not the problem. This foundational work informed how the team chose to take the new brand to market, creating the world-first Skin Peace Pledge.

"We didn't want to just have an impact at a product level if we could have a more significant effect on how women think about their skin. So, we're challenging the category and encouraging women to tell us about the unrealistic beauty language that disturbs them most", says Emma Dalton, GM at YoungShand.

The Skin Peace Pledge is a commitment to a new way of talking about skin and beauty without negatively impacting women's self-esteem. The pledge will inform a set of standards that Unconditional Skincare Co. will commit to as a brand – with the hope that it will promote a discussion at an influencer and industry level, helping to create broader change.

"We've seen quite clearly that women are fed up with being told their skin is a problem. They feel the constant pressure to live up to unrealistic beauty expectations, upheld by society and proliferated throughout advertising, social media and beauty publications. This was a great opportunity to kickstart an important conversation", says Anne Boothroyd, ECD YoungShand.

Phase one of the campaign is designed to collect the messages from women that impact them the most. The team will then work with a psychologist to create the standards underpinning the Skin Peace Pledge.

The campaign kicked off by demonstrating first-hand the sort of messages that women are exposed to everyday. A bespoke tool developed by YoungShand's tech team scraped all the beauty messages posted to YouTube over five consecutive 12 hour periods. Using this data, five films were created that showcased just some of the unrealistic beauty messages directed at women every day.

YoungShand's integrated team delivered the full project, including the brand name and brand identity, including the packaging design, e-commerce website, media, brand platform and launch campaign. You can see the full campaign here.

Contributions to the Skin Peace Pledge so far have included this feedback from women:

• "Messages about clear skin make me feel helpless about mine."

• "I'm covered in freckles, and it makes them feel like they're a problem to be fixed."

• "The messages I see make me think that wrinkles make you look ugly, that having any type of spot or line on your body is ugly."

• The unrealistic beauty message I've seen my whole life is that women should chase poreless skin.

• Messages that set up an unrealistic idea that you shouldn't age.

• We should cancel the phrase 'problem skin'. It's as if my skin is this lawless demon that can't be tamed...it's so negative!


To find out more about the Skin Peace Pledge or to contribute the unrealistic skincare messages you want to see changed, visit here.