The brief: Sephora tapped us to revamp the Hearts Not Hate program with a new social playbook, including a refined mission, new brand guidelines, tone of voice, and rollout plan across their landing page and social. Hearts Not Hate is Sephora’s commitment to a safe place for our online community to explore all forms of self-expression.
Our approach: During Mental Health Awareness Month, we re-launched the program. For three full days, we were together in the Sephora LA office – war room style. We scoured the internet for haters in the comments and responded from Sephora’s account with our new voice. To truly turn negativity into something celebratory, we even gifted creators who were receiving hate with a gift card to purchase products that emphasized the feature or makeup that was receiving negative attention.
We continued the momentum out in the wild with a LaLaLand Kind Cafe x Hearts Not Hate pop up, where positive affirmations and Hearts Not Hate branding took over the scene. And we tapped relevant talent (The one and only Amaya Papaya from Love Island) to continue brining Hearts Not Hate into our feed.
Together we worked to ease the mental load of combating hate for Sephora’s community during a month of mental rest, showing Hearts Not Hate in action. Our overall goal was to turn hate into positivity, and we did just that. And our playbook serves as global guide, influencing Sephora partners across the world.
My role: Concepting, Copywriting, Scriptwriting, Social Playbook Creation, Social Strategy Support, “War Room” Planning and Execution
Here’s how we clap back at the haters online using the “Yes, And” ethos we crafted:
These are the 4 pillars we refined and wrote that are being used by Sephora teams worldwide. For consumer-facing work, we simplified them to be more concise and colloquial. And on social, we call them the “house rules”:
