HOW TO MAKE YOUR NEXT POP-UP STORE THE ULTIMATE BEAUTY DESTINATION
Sephora marked its return to the UK with a pop-up in London
COSMETICS BUSINESS | 15TH June 2023 | Full article can be found here
Top retail and experiential agency Backlash shares their expert advice for creating a pop-up store that people will travel miles to attend
Online shopping is undoubtedly convenient, but there's nothing like experiencing a favourite beauty brand, or discovering a new one, in person. Sure, speedy delivery means a repeat purchase can land on the doorstep the next day, but consumers can't spritz, or swatch through their screen.
Beauty pop-ups are now an essential tool to many marketers (and if they aren't, they should be) to elevate the overall brand experience to fans as well as reach new ones. It's an opportunity for D2C players to tell their story, test the brick-and-mortar water and provide excellent customer experiences to boost loyalty for years to come.
James Barnes is the founder of Backlash, the experiential agency behind some of Britain's most talked about pop-ups, including Sephora's UK return and Beauty Pie's 'warehouse of dreams'. Here are his top tips to make your next pop-up store an ultimate beauty destination.
1. Have an open mind
When it comes to the crucial planning stage, the key, says Barnes, is to have a clear list of must-haves but be open-minded to new ideas from your agency. "We also work in toys and small electricals, where we've worked on the weird and the wonderful, so we can draw strategies, tactics and creative ideas from other places.
"That's why we always insist on a session where we go in with up to ten overarching concepts and then we take one, hone it down so it really hits the mark and 99% of the time it's the idea that they didn't know they wanted."
Beauty Pie encouraged people to shop from its 'warehouses' to reflect its ethos of cutting out the middle men
2. Don't start with the location
Most people start with location when they plan a pop-up, says Barnes, but his advice is to prioritise creating a clear vision that consumers will flock to and the press will cover.
"If you create an overarching concept that's so exciting, so cool and that gives people something really great, people will travel anywhere to it. Creative concept is by far the most important rule and success factor."
3. Go outside of London
"Whenever you take an experiential event outside of London, it is mobbed because consumers just don't have as much of the great stuff as the Londoners do. Londoners are so blase!" says Barnes.
Influencer and media coverage may be more likely in London, he adds, but there is plenty to win outside of the UK capital by giving life to otherwise empty retail units: "your money could win a lot of people's hearts by going to these places."
Northern England, particularly Liverpool and Manchester, is fast becoming a hub for beauty brands keen to expand outside of London with their next bricks-and-mortar outlet. "We could argue that they're more beauty engaged in the North," adds Barnes.
Backlash created a branded vehicle for Tanologist to travel to key cities
4. Make actual space for TikTok
TikTok is the most important consideration when thinking about a pop-up space, explains Barnes, for creating both teaser footage and user-generated content during the event.
But for busy multi-brand retailers, who can sometimes have upwards of 30 brands in one pop-up, each with social media moments, space is vital to ensure consumers can film aesthetically-pleasing shots without unwanted people ruining the take.
"People also like to do a walkthrough of the event, even people who aren't aspiring influencers but just like to have fun with content," adds Barnes.
"You have to make sure that from start to finish there is a nice experience and allow them to be able to walk through and take time on their phones."
5. Use augmented reality to pull a concept together
Branded filters, or augmented reality (AR) moments engage not only pop-up attendees, but also people who couldn't make the event as well as UGC long after the event ends.
"That's really attractive to brands at the moment, if you can have some kind of filter or augmented reality experience. It is inherently scalable, then you can take that then to have on your counters, your stalls or at home," says Barnes.
But don't worry about rushing into the metaverse yet, says Barnes, who believes that Web3 events and physical pop-ups will "live side by side".
"I'll probably see a time when we get a brief to create an event that has to mimic what the metaverse is, or vice versa. But do I see experiential agencies becoming metaverse agencies? Maybe, but that's 20 years away. Physical retail is still so powerful."
Rituals' pop-up with Backlash embraced augmented reality to highlight its signature sakura branding in a novel way
6. Prepare to work fast
If you want a pop-up to capture the zeitgeist, be prepared to work fast with agencies. "We created a pop-up for Neom Organics in Westfield, White City, in 28 days from the time the email landed in my inbox to the doors opening.
"The difficulty comes in the corporate layers of a brand which can prevent them from working as quickly as an agency. A brand will come to an agency to ask for an event in three weeks, but will then take five days to approve something because of the corporate ladder. Agencies work a lot faster than brands, so if you want to do things quickly, you just have to be a bit more agile."
7. Props are for life, not just a press event
"The events industry is very wasteful and we've been pushing clients to be more sustainable for years, but it might affect the budget by 5%, because the materials are more expensive, or because of the construction methods," says Barnes.
If you do want to flex your eco-friendly credentials at the event, opt for renting props or prepare to embrace the nitty gritty of the design. Choose screws rather than nails, for example, or removable paneling, so props can easily be taken down and reused in-stores, HQ or future events.
8. Rethink how you measure success
"Brands measure success in either sales, or reach and engagement. But what people don't quite realise is that a pop-up shop can be a billboard on the busiest road in London, where you can't buy a billboard. It's also a content creation hub for your influencers and the public, then there's the priceless live feedback from the public on the products."
Pop-ups are also an opportunity for online-only brands to boost categories, such as make-up or fragrance where consumers may prefer to try before they buy.
Food and drink can encourage dwell time (Image: Backlash / Paula's Choice)
9. Team up with people outside of beauty
"Bring in other services, like food and drink, into your pop-up so there's a longer dwell time and to make your store a destination," advises Barnes. "People will often travel from quite some distance to come to a pop-up that could be over in 20 minutes."
For longer pop-ups, a calendar of must-see moments can help to reach different audiences and encourage brand fans to return. "A programme of events, or creating something different every day, gives longer events a boost. If you're there for ten days, then you're going to get ten days of different content and different kinds of passion points for people.
"If you've got beautiful packaging design, you could bring in the artists to talk, or you could talk about how the different ingredients are collected and sustainability. There's loads of different options for brands to do."