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About face: Trilogy’s print principles earn Glossie honours

The final instalment of The Glossies for this year had one of the biggest responses yet, with over 800 votes. And it was Trilogy and Special Group’s all-natural campaign in Woman’s Day that came out on top, beating Taste magazine’s Homebrand takeover by Progressive and Ogilvy and DB Export and Colenso BBDO’s The Wine List in Metro

There were only a few votes between first and second, but Trilogy, which was purchased by Ecoya back in 2010, has long played to its strengths of being a natural and more sustainable alternative to mainstream cosmetics. And given the long-running debate over the un-natural retouching tricks often employed by magazines and advertisers (most recently leading to petitions against Cleo and Seventeen), the Trilogy campaign took a stand on the issue by openly admitting it hadn’t retouched the image. 

Featuring an Angelina Jolie-alike model with the lines ‘Every face has a story to tell. What’s yours?’ and ’we believe true beauty is real beauty’, the brand asked viewers to let them know what they thought about that decision at Facebook.com/trilogyproducts. And plenty took them up on the offer, with an overwhelmingly positive response to its stance (compare the real with the fake here). 

“In terms of engagement, the social media response to this campaign was outstanding,” says Lisa Wilson, international communications manager. “It drove the highest levels of interaction and brand love we’ve seen on our Facebook page and Twitter chatter, which was one of our key objectives. In terms of brand relevance and communicating our key messages, Special Group hit the mark perfectly and created something which really differentiates our brand in an incredibly crowded marketplace.”

Special Group’s Tony Bradbourne says it has been working with Trilogy for around four months and it was nice to get off to a good start with this campaign.

“It generated a huge amount of feedback and goodwill, which is pretty important for a brand like them,” he says.

Since it kicked off around ten years ago, Trilogy, which is “designed around simplicity, purity and vitality”, has won a number of international awards for its products and, as Bradbourne says, “they’ve been building from the product up, rather than from the hype down”. And it has recently added another string to its marketing bow because, after 18 months of research and development and an exhaustive certification process, it became the first New Zealand brand to carry the internationally recognised NATRUE standard. 

“There is a lot of confusion out there about what ‘natural’ really means in regards to skincare,” says global sales and marketing manager Corinne Morley. “We are delighted to be able to offer our customers an independent guarantee that Trilogy products are authentically natural and cruelty free, thereby helping them to make informed decisions about their skincare choices.” 

She says Trilogy has always been committed to its
own rigorous standards, sourcing high-quality natural ingredients from
sustainable, ethical sources and using minimal processing to create
formulations. So, in a similar fashion to the principled stance evidenced by the print campaign, the decision to apply for
this certification and provide manufacturers and consumers with a clear direction for defining natural cosmetics was a natural extension of that commitment. 

In second place for this round was the smart Homebrand takeover of Taste magazine by Progressive and Ogilvy, which was almost like a print version of the surprise people generally get after the results of a blind taste test are revealed and aimed “to position Homebrand products as a reputable brand option for more adventurous chefs” by revealing inside that the shot from the cover had used Homebrand products. 

Along with a few wildcard entires from throughout the year, these three place getters will go through to the final of The Glossies, with the winner of the annual award to be chosen by a panel of super-intelligent humans with impeccable taste. 

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