7 BEAUTY AND THE TWO
UNDERTAKERS

In 1976, Gordon Roddick left for an expedition which was to take him from Buenos Aires to New York on horseback. He left behind his young wife, Anita. Anita needed some means of supporting herself and their young family while he was away and after considering a number of options she decided that she wanted to open a shop selling cosmetics.

This was to be no ordinary cosmetics shop; she wanted to follow the practice of Tahitian women who made cosmetics using local, natural products. She wanted to eschew the traditional glossy, highly packaged, highly advertised approach of many beauty firms.

She wanted to champion recycling, natural products and a fair return for the producers of the all-important ingredients.

The store still needed a name. Whilst travelling in America, Anita had seen a car bodywork garage named “The Body Shop”. She had immediately liked the name and now she remembered it. A student created a logo for her for the princely sum of £25.

Her choice of name, however, wasn’t popular with two undertakers who had premises close to her first store in Brighton. They thought the name might be bad for their trade and she received a letter from their solicitors. Rather than give up on her new brand name, Anita decided to fight for it. She contacted the local paper and told them her story. They reprinted it in a double-page spread providing wonderful free publicity just in time for the store’s launch.

On Saturday 27 March 1976, The Body Shop opened its doors to the public for the first time. The day’s takings were £130. Fast-forward 27 years, and The Body Shop now has more than 1,500 stores worldwide.

The brand still doesn’t use traditional advertising, although it exploits all the opportunities it gets to promote itself using its store windows, in-store posters and leaflets, lorries and any PR opportunities that arise.

Anita Roddick has appeared in a commercial, however. It was part of a campaign for American Express where celebrities talked about how American Express helped them to conduct their business. Anita had stuck to her principles of not spending her money advertising The Body Shop but had found another means of gaining free publicity for her brand.

And the moral is that PR is not only one of the most powerful media for a brand, but it’s also free. What is it about your brand that would make a PR story?