If you've ever been inside a LUSH store, odds are it was a sensory experience. Whether it's the amazing smells of the Avobath bath bomb, Karma soap, and Vanillary perfume or the ability to sample the brand's cruelty-free products, you probably won't forget your visit.
So when the global COVID-19 pandemic first reached North America, LUSH decided to turn one of its signature in-store features into a public service for anyone passing by: free hand washing.
While face masks and social distancing have become the norms for staying as safe as possible when around others, at the outset of the pandemic, the primary guidelines were to wash your hands frequently. So, this became the perfect opportunity for LUSH to help promote an important safety measure that it already had available. But the brand's goodwill gesture was short-lived. The very next day, LUSH was forced to close its stores as the world went into lockdown.
Not only could it no longer provide a public service, it couldn't provide any service. And for such an experiential brand, no more storefronts meant it had to think quickly about how to engage customers online. But first, LUSH needed an efficient way to inform people that its hundreds of locations would be closed around the country, and to get ahead of the questions it knew would come in. With a lean digital marketing team of only three, the brand turned to Yext to streamline the whole process.