shu uemura is a globally renowned cosmetic brand. It is known for its striking, expressive and artistic sensibility that originated with its founder.
The challenge
In Asia, shu uemura’s communications strategies are decided by each market, meaning that the brand experience and expression can vary slightly from market to market. shu uemura global wanted to design a loyalty program that could fit multiple markets to ensure the best possible customer experience.
The solution
Connecting common consumer truths with a singular brand POV.
Each market in Asia is distinct in its culture, cosmetics sensibilities, digital platforms and on how it perceives the shu uemura brand. We needed to design a program that offered a toolbox of solutions to each market, but with each tool anchored in a universal brand and consumer truths.
Through primary customer research, local market stakeholder interviews and client-agency design workshops, we identified common brand perceptions, aligned consumer interests, and designed a loyalty experience and framework that was adaptable across cultures and technology platforms.
The outcome was a universal shu uemura loyalty program – Shu for Me Rewards.
The name of the program and the program design is rooted in celebrating the common desire of Shu customer’s to express their beauty uniquely.
In order for each market to adopt the program locally, in addition to designing and developing communication and content assets and templates for web, mobile, social apps, email, in store and direct mail, we built a comprehensive loyalty play book containing:
• The program strategy and proposition – rationale/focus
• Points earning / and redemption logic.
• Generosity rates and rewards strategy
• identified reward examples for customer rewards and recognition
• Program visual identity and tagline
• Visual guidelines
The result
Our loyalty program design was delivered to the central shu uemura team in Tokyo and shared with local Asian markets. And while shu uemura empowers each market to decide whether to use global assets – to date, the program has been adopted and localized across 6 different Asian markets: Japan, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia.
