Sanctuary Spa Serves Up Lessons in Mental Health, Wellness
WELLNESS WARRIORS: In a further sign that boundaries between health and beauty are blurring, Britain’s Sanctuary Spa is set to unveil its largest campaign, promoting a mental wellness message rather than a product one.
Sanctuary Spa has tapped clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Smith, who specializes in sharing snappy mental health and motivational videos on TikTok and other social media platforms. She’s advised Sanctuary on the campaign, which asks women to set aside 25 minutes a day to do something they love, or find fulfilling, and will also propose self care suggestions in the coming weeks and months.
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The campaign “This Counts” launches on Sept. 6 and includes a TV ad showing women dancing, gardening, baking or eating from a jar of chocolate spread. Outdoor print and social media activity will run until at least the end of the year.
Sanctuary creates a large-scale campaign every four to five years and Jacqueline Burchell, global marketing and product development director for Sanctuary Spa, said the brand wanted to seize this particular moment of post-lockdown transition to telegraph its message of empowerment.
“As we slowly come out of COVID-19, we felt it was the right time for us to continue talking about self care,” said Burchell, adding that online sales of spa, bath and treatment products had done “phenomenally well” during lockdown as had gift packs, which people were sending to family and friends when physical stores were shut.
Sanctuary, a division of PZ Cussons, one of Britain’s largest beauty companies, came up with the idea after polling 2,000 women aged 18 to 65 across the U.K. earlier this year. The study found that the majority of those women were spending an average of 17 minutes and 7 seconds a day on self care. In addition, some of the women surveyed feared they would have even less time to themselves in the next months as daily work and family routines return to “normal.”
Devised by the creative communications agency Southpaw, the ads are meant to separate guilt from pleasure and give women permission to take care of themselves, even if it’s in a series of five-minute spurts each day.
Smith said: “Exercise, see friends, set time to rest, and for meditation and relaxation. They don’t take away your problems, or make the world a different place, but something as simple as being surrounded in nature or listening to powerful music can take us from inexplicable sadness to feelings of awe and calm.”
Sanctuary said that its key stockists, including Amazon, Boots, Superdrug and Sainsbury’s, will be supporting the campaign across in-store, online and social media.
There will be imagery at point of sale, banners and video content with the #ThisCounts campaign messaging. Ads are also set to appear on the London Underground.
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