ABOUT

Working with SYOSS and Henkel for more than a decade, I have led creative across two major evolutions of the brand in China. The relationship spanned brand strategy, campaigns, film, photography, social, retail and ecommerce.

The Brief

SYOSS had built its reputation around professional salon performance, but needed to strengthen its relevance with a younger, increasingly style-conscious Chinese audience. We were asked to create a new campaign platform that could make the brand feel more contemporary and culturally connected, while still communicating the product expertise at its core.

The challenge was to create something bigger than a conventional advertising campaign: an idea capable of generating brand communications, product education and a continuous stream of content across social, ecommerce and retail.

The Work

I led the development of Urban Futures, positioning SYOSS at the intersection of professional hair expertise and contemporary Asian style.

We built the campaign around actress and singer Victoria Song, working with celebrity stylist Tomo Numayama to create a series of distinctive looks that consumers could recreate themselves. Rather than treating the celebrity campaign and product education as separate pieces of communication, we connected them: the fashion imagery created aspiration, while films, tutorials and social content turned each look into something useful and achievable.

The resulting visual system extended across campaign film, photography, social content, PR, ecommerce, DTC and retail, giving SYOSS a consistent identity wherever consumers encountered the brand.

The Impact

Urban Futures became a major integrated platform for SYOSS, extending from national campaign communications into social, ecommerce and retail. Its success contributed to a long-running creative partnership with Henkel and led to further major SYOSS brand work.