FOREO: Brand Facelift

Consistency of the brand’s communication and image through different channels helps it stand out in the crowd. And what does it mean to systematize and communicationally and visually reposition a premium global brand present in over 80 countries, as well as what production challenges we faced along the way — find out in this case study.

A pretty big deal

In 2013 two employees founded a company in a small office in Stockholm with the idea of combining beauty, tech and wellness categories into a brand of skin care products with a simple mission — to improve people’s beauty and self-confidence using visionary technology.

Today, that office represents the global headquarters of FOREO, an innovative tech-beauty pioneer and leader with over 3000 employees in over 10 cities and over 36 million sold products in 80 countries. A brand that covers so many different markets is faced with different challenges as well — how to satisfy the peculiarities of each country and their different definition of beauty while maintaining the brand’s recognisability? How to match the subbrands’ communication with the head brand’s, distinctly emphasize the brand’s advantages and manage to differ from the rest of the competition all over the world?

Brand facelift

FOREO is not just another beauty brand and it shouldn’t look that way either. That’s why this advanced giant needed a new systematized face that would be in line with its position as a premium leader in the segment of the beauty industry — everything that the previous playful and inconsistent communication didn’t reflect. Before implementing any changes, it was important to set up pillars on which the brand’s image and communication will be built in the future.

1. Technology — the main differential advantage of FOREO in the beauty segment
2. Beauty — reflects the representation of diversity as opposed to generic and expected models
3. Optimism — the brand’s approach to the world which can be seen in its products as well as its communication

Like every good skincare routine, this brand care routine also started with a thorough cleanse. We removed layers of mixed photography and illustration styles, stock-like visuals, generic claims and the color mania. The next step was nourishing the brand with high-quality ingredients: modern layouts that display FOREO’s tech and beauty personality, standardization of visuals, creating a detailed brand book with instructions for the use of communication and visuals, adjusting ads to different communication channels, and, the most important part, changing the visual expression — a complete art direction and production of over 140 photos and videos that will cover the brand’s needs in all 80 markets.

80 countries, 80,000 details

The library is officially open! Creating the base of 140 visuals for a global brand like FOREO meant a logistically and creatively challenging project that lasted for nearly four months from preproduction to postproduction. The project that covered 46 different FOREO devices and 11 types of skin care products included 40 production crew members and 20 models from six countries, which makes this one of the largest projects of this type ever carried out in Croatia.

The art direction had to include different contexts for every photo while maintaining the same visual style of the product and model shots that were handled separately by two teams on two parallel sets. The shooting for both product and models team was divided into four modules with a week-long break between each during which selection and part of postproduction were made, and in the period between modules, the production team was doing final touches for the next shoot.

Product

The product team, led by the photographer Nikola Zelmanović, shot products in hand-made sets inside a studio. 15 crew members worked in this lab and built 42 different sets in 12 days. With 67 produced photos and videos, this team definitely put the product in productivity.

Model Team

The team, led by photography duo Matković & Vild, shot photos and videos on existing locations with models. The team consisted of 25 members who managed to produce 73 photos and videos with 20 models and 70 different stylings over a span of nine days.

The shoot took place in six locations in Zagreb with 30 different sets created. It was important to bear in mind the cultural differences of the countries the visuals were intended for, as well as to make sure that the final product showed visible diversity and genuineness, which is why the models came from six different countries.

After finishing the photo and video shooting and creating the brand book, the project is now in the phase of implementing new visuals in all channels, and soon the new FOREO look & feel will be visible in each of the 80 markets they are present on