INTERNATIONAL. Japanese beauty brand SEKKISEI, owned by KOSÉ Corporation, is expanding its key sustainability project Save the Blue across its travel retail network for a two-month period. The project is running throughout July and August.
The O2O campaign engages with travellers at all points of their journey through a variety of activations and touchpoints.
Offline, KOSÉ Travel Retail has revamped its travel retail counters with Save the Blue theming. Ocean-themed visuals are highlighting key SEKKISEI product lines while free gifts with purchase and samples are available across selected counters.
Online, KOSÉ Travel Retail is running a special sampling event. Customers can participate through the official SEKKISEI WeChat Mini Program and official SEKKISEI WeChat account. Here, they are able to receive a 24mL sample of SEKKISEI Lotion, the SAVE the BLUE project hero product. The sampling event has already amassed a great response, the brand said.
The brand hosted livestreams on 14 and 22July. These featured special games and interactive sessions with hosting by KOL Haruru on 14 July and KOL Monica Guo 茄子 on 22 July. Customers could also buy limited Disney editions of their favourite SEKKISEI products.
The livestreams featured the main SEKKISEI Series but all the brand’s other collections. They highlighted the brand’s many sustainability initiatives. The livestreams were supported by activities across Chinese social platforms Weibo, WeChat and Red.
KOSÉ Travel Retail President Shu Shibue commented: “This summer, we will expand on the Save the Blue project in Hainan Island to protect the beautiful and rich natural landscapes there. We hope that this initiative will lead to further opportunities for our travel retail business. We will continue to work together with our retailer partners to help promote the beauty and wellbeing of our consumers and of Mother Earth.”
Save the Blue
Founded in 1985, SEKKISEI is a well-loved Japanese beauty brand that centred around the use of traditional Asian herbs. SEKKISEI uses botanicals in its formulations with the goal of ‘bringing beauty back to nature.’
SEKKISEI aims to help create a sustainable society where “people live in happiness through its core business of beauty.”
The clean beauty brand seeks to minimise its carbon footprint through various initiatives which include switching to eco-friendly packaging and adopted sustainable production methods.
SEKKISEI’s signature Lapis Lazuli blue colour is inspired by apothecary bottles used in Asian herbology. This served as the inspiration for the ‘SAVE the BLUE’ project, which originally launched with saving endangered coral reefs in Okinawa in 2009.
Ten years later, SEKKISEI expanded the project to include reforestation in Tohoku, Japan. Today, Save the Blue has been extended to China, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the US.
SEKKISEI contributes a portion of sales from the project to environmental conservation and sustainable education initiatives.
KOSÉ Travel Retail started its own Save the Blue project in 2022, with the aim of restoring and protecting mangrove forests in Hainan. KOSÉ Travel Retail donated a portion of duty free sales, contributing to the reforestation of 1,666sq m of mangroves in Sanya. ✈
