LUSH’S NON-SHOWY INCLUSIVE AF COPY

We're big fans of Lush. (Poole businesses represent!) They're one of the OG brand voice brands. We're massive fans of their big, political, in-your-face campaigns. But this little snippet from the Q&A in a Lush newspaper is an example of their inclusivity running deeper than just campaigns. Really, really impressive stuff.

We've already written about this in our breakdown on inclusive writing. (Check it out here.) And because squeezing 3,500 words onto this page would be a struggle, we'll keep it brief. First of all, the context. There's a lot of people (usually with a fondness for red headwear or that think it’d be nice to grab a pint with Nigel Farage) that are in the comments of every inclusive post saying “go woke, go broke” or “the woke mind virus has got you too? Unfollowed”. Usually, we treat these comments with the kind of eye-rolling derision they deserve. (After all, as we’ve covered before, bad reviews from the wrong customers are sometimes better than good reviews from the right customers.) But this year, there’s a new study in town. And a 4-year study by Oxford’s Saïd Business School and the UN’s Unstereotype Alliance analysed 392 brands across 58 countries and found that ads using inclusive language and representation saw things like:

• ​3.46% higher immediate sales
• 16.26% higher long-term sales
• 62% higher likelihood of being a consumer’s first choice
• 15% higher brand loyalty
• 54% higher pricing power (AKA, your products seem more valuable)
• 9.4% higher salience (AKA, people remember your brand more)

And while there are lots of nuances to writing inclusive copy, one of the easiest things to do is to practice transformative language AKA, just changing the conversation. (Additive language is like "women and menstruating people" where you add people in. Transformative language is where you reframe the topic completely.) And that's what Lush do here. The usual approach to writing about spa treatments is to assume (unless told otherwise) that it’s for a female audience. But Lush know that not only do men enjoy being pampered, but it’s not just men who have facial hair. They’re being inclusive in what they’re saying (by realising people with facial hair will want a treatment) and in how they’re saying it (“if you’ve got facial hair, we’ve got you covered” not “we massage men too.”) It’s smart. It’s inclusive. And it’s going to be more profitable too. Just *chef’s kiss*. And the best thing is that you don't have to rewrite your entire brand to do this. Just ask: who am I accidentally excluding with the assumptions baked into this sentence? Can I let more people see themselves in this copy by removing them? That's it. But it's such a powerful thing to do.