Collaborative project with Mother and The Body Shop
For several years David has been running live student projects with the creative agency Mother. Most recently he organised a four week project creating activist brand campaigns for The Body Shop. The project brief asked students teams to create a radical campaign that tackled one of the following themes: LGBTQI+, Empowerment of Women and Girls, or Ageism.
The Body Shop is known as an early pioneer of ethical branding, particularly with regard to their position on animal testing. But given that it is now commonplace for brands to take an active stance on a whole range of issues, the brief challenged students to show how The Body Shop could communicate around these issues in the future in ways that are meaningful, authentic and not simply corporate virtue signalling.
From a strategic perspective the brief proved very interesting as it was a challenge for students to make meaningful activist work that had genuine substance. Many of the successful proposals moved beyond traditional campaigning to include interactive installations and events. For example, one group proposed the introduction of life drawing within stores as a way to normalise the human body and promote body positivity.
During the project students presented their work to creatives at Mother in the boardroom of their Shoreditch premises. The project concluded with a show of work, with students discussing their final proposals with the marketing team from The Body Shop.