The exhibition lasted for five days and the previous interventions I focused more on the consumer part. This intervention was different from the previous ones in that I planned and organised the exhibition and promotion together with the businesses I worked with. Using HARMEI’s platform and influence helped my exhibition to have a wider impact on the stakeholders.
The exhibition is also a warm-up campaign for the opening of HARMEI’s organic skincare sales channel. I interviewed a large number of HARMAY consumers during the course of the exhibition and found that 80% of those interviewed had a strong interest in the upcoming organic skincare sales division, which they expressed great anticipation for.
The manager of HARMEI said that the exhibition had also given him more confidence in opening an organic beauty department. We have started a research on European organic beauty brands to select the right ones for Chinese consumers among many others.
At the same time this intervention, and the collaboration with Huami, made me realise that it takes more rigorous research and logical thinking to make a commercial venture. But to my surprise, Chinese consumers are very interested and enthusiastic about organic skincare.
1.Contact with HARMAY Founder’s meeting I got a response to my previous contact with HARMAY’s main manager, Wang Junchao, who expressed interest in collaborating with me after seeing my vr exhibition and the discussions and content posted on Xiaohongbook. He said that the project I was working on to popularise the concept of organic skincare coincided with HARMAY’s brand philosophy – to bring better ideas to consumers through sensory experiences and to be responsible for the beauty of the world through creation.
I soon had an online meeting with Wang Junchao and the head of HARMAY’s art marketing department, where I learned that HARMAY was also laying out a strategic marketing plan for the organic skincare market, so I proposed to collaborate with HARMAY to hold an exhibition on organic skincare concepts in HARMAY’s offline shops. Here are some important notes from the meeting
-There was a consensus that organic beauty has a great future in the Chinese market, and that the current selection of organic beauty brands in China is still relatively small, so the concept of organic can be unfamiliar and vague to consumers. At this stage, promoting and introducing independent and established organic beauty brands is the most suitable way to increase consumers’ awareness of organic beauty. -HARMAY has plans to sign exclusive deals with independent European organic brands in the future to open organic beauty outlets. -The online meeting led to a collaboration with HARMAY, where I will curate an offline art exhibition as an artist in their shops.
2.Exhibition content
It was a challenge for me to prepare the offline exhibition in three weeks. The venue for this exhibition was in the commercial centre of Beijing, with high traffic and short stay times. The content of my exhibition needed to be visual enough to convey the exact message to the stakeholders in a short time.
After trying several options, I chose to use plants, soil, metal, mirrors and light as the basic elements of the exhibition. Taking these elements in a way that defies the norm and suggests the conflict and stress that traditional beauty brings to the environment. At the same time the concept of organic beauty is played on a loop on the LED screen above the hanging plants.
When the plants leave the soil, they coexist with metal, glass, plastic and light to create a strong sense of unfamiliarity and conflict, using visual and experimental differences to lead the consumers to think about organic beauty and sustainable beauty lifestyles.
