Insight

Following a social audit and strategy piece, our insights told us that hairdressers delighted in sharing the content of their end-looks. They were creating ‘fit for feed’ content direct to social from the salon floor that was authentic, honest and really, really engaging. Wella was not part of this conversation and hadn’t yet tuned in to the latest content production trends being championed at the grassroots.

Imagination

We took the strategic decision to move away from product initiative messaging and polished production, to an approach that tapped into this crowdsourced creativity, championed authenticity and was ‘hairdresser first'. The key opportunity for Wella lay in enlisting the help of a small army of content-savvy hairdressers (their key audience), destined for the Wella social channels’ limelight. We called this community the Wella Passionistas.

Implementation

Wella Passionistas is a community of hairdressers who use the products every day. They’re not paid – they’re the real deal. As such we have shaped the programme with value exchange at the core of the experience.

The Passionista programme is homed in a custom community app that distributes regular content-creation challenges, houses tips on creating stand-out content using the latest social formats, and includes resources to help Passionisas build their own communities.

The end result is amazing content, shot with the creative and knowing eye of a hairdresser and produced at scale by hundreds of Passionistas from across the globe.

Impact

This new strategy, rooted in value exchange and co-creation, has grown brand advocacy and transformed Wella’s approach to digital content production.

In just a few months, Wella Passionistas has generated over 2,000 pieces of content (without any monetary incentive, just sheer brand passion). As well as being posted on their own social channels, Passionista-generated content has now become the central fuel for the brand’s social editorial, enabling Wella to establish a brand-new social voice, based on dynamic, hypnotising formats and produced directly from the salon floor. Passionista content already makes up 13% of Wella’s global social editorial and achieves the highest engagement rates of all owned social posts.

Additionally, since joining the programme, each Passionista has enjoyed a 25% average growth rate for their personal channels. A win/win for Wella and their Passionista community!