Ulta Beauty Is Helping Associates Find Joy. How Will the Brand Benefit?

Ulta Beauty has launched The Joy Project, a long-term initiative focused on helping consumers find, embrace, and experience joy, in partnership with best-selling author, motivational speaker, and podcast host Mel Robbins. The project was inspired by feedback from associates who said they regularly witnessed customers struggling with negative self-talk.

The Joy Project is kicking off with the release of The Joy Study, third-party research commissioned by Ulta Beauty with the goal of sparking a conversation about the barriers people face in achieving joy and how to overcome them. The survey sampled how 5,000 adults and teenagers feel joy, as well as the barriers in the way of experiencing it. While 85% of people wish they felt a high level of joy in their lives, only 58% of people report feeling that way.

Negative self-talk was one of the top barriers at 73% of those polled, and 70% of those experiencing it don’t recognize negative self-talk when it’s happening. Additionally, 91% of those who experience negative self-talk said it was one of the primary obstacles in the way of their ability to experience joy.

These findings will tie back into retail through a training program for all 53,000 Ulta Beauty associates that will help them change the way they think about themselves and empower shoppers to do the same. The series of mini courses, which is also being developed in partnership with Robbins, has been named “A Toolkit for Joy” and aims to help associates “identify their inner critic, interrupt the negative patterns, and inspire themselves and others in the process.”

Ulta Beauty will also reach beyond its stores by inviting influencers and creator communities to post about their own journeys to joy by using the hashtag #joyforward.

“Knowing Ulta Beauty’s associates hear this self-criticism from their guests every day, Ulta Beauty and I are giving them the tools to help their guests silence the inner critic and experience more joy,” said Robbins in a press release. “There are so many brands and companies publicly discussing well-being, but few are activating in such a meaningful way. I’m honored to work with Ulta Beauty, creating custom trainings that will empower those associates to silence that inner critic and coach guests to do the same all with a mission to inspire a national conversation to spread more joy.”

While the benefits of inspiring joy may not be immediately tangible, the new focus could have a positive impact on Ulta Beauty’s employees. A 2021 study by Retail Trust found that the pandemic had a negative effect on the mental health of 84% of polled retail workers, with 53% reporting that they felt cheerful rarely or none of the time. With mental health becoming a retail marketing issue, a campaign that exists solely to spread joy — not tie back into products or promotions — could help Ulta Beauty build loyalty with stressed workers and shoppers alike.