Workroom Giving Brands Purpose
20 May 2025
In a world driven by algorithms, automation, and affectation, craft cuts through.
Craft says: “this was made with care, and this brand has standards.”
Take beauty – a $590B industry by 2028 (McKinsey & Company). New brands launch every day, and old ones reinvent just as fast. It’s noisy. But handcrafted design? It whispers ‘quality’ in a way mass production never can.
You feel it before you know it – it feels ‘distinctive’.
In beauty, distinction builds trust. And trust is what builds brands.
In 2016 Coty launched on the NYSE after merging with Procter & Gamble’s Beauty Business. Just 9 months earlier, their team asked us to help define what the ‘new’ Coty would stand for – and to build a brand ready to challenge the beauty industry.
Our positioning and purpose defined the business’s intent: To ‘Celebrate and liberate the diversity of beauty’. Beauty is ‘in’ and ‘for’ everyone.
When it came to the new identity, we celebrated craft. Our designers, stylists and photographers created a kaleidoscope of hand-made butterflies crafted from raw materials linked to Coty’s famous brands: OPI, Rimmel, Wella, Covergirl, Philosophy. Not only did the butterflies showcase Coty’s core categories – fragrance, hair, cosmetics – they celebrated beauty’s diversity – nature and people.
Building an identity of ‘multiples’ is a symbol of bold decision-making, and of designers who give a damn. It also differentiates, inspires and raises the bar.
Overnight, Coty became the world’s 3rd-largest beauty company: $9B in revenue. 20K employees. And a brand identity that paid homage to the creation of gorgeous fragrances, colours and cosmetics.
Crafting butterflies took time. But it was purposeful, human, and it stood in defiance of ‘the ordinary’.
When a brand invests in craft, it doesn’t just stand out – it stands for something.
Workroom Giving Brands Purpose