Beauty salon launches marketing campaign featuring real clients to help stop body-shaming

Skins and Needles Beauty salon in Middlesbrough is on the search for “real” people to use in its new marketing campaign “Be your own kind of beautiful”. 

Owner Sam Grierson wants to use real clients to promote her services because she’s “sick” of seeing “unrealistic” images of people on social media which can make customers feel bad about themselves. 

The campaign has been so well received that the salon has been inundated with requests with customers wanting to model for the business. 

“We wanted to show that beauty comes in all shapes, forms, sizes and styles, and we didn’t want to use only stereotypical ‘pretty’ images to promote our salon,” Grierson told Teeside Live. 

“It’s important to us that everyone feels they can come and feel pampered and beautiful. I appreciate salons have to advertise their work, but we want to do it on real people, especially in this day and age with social media [as] everything is filtered.” 

This initiative comes not long after spa group Spa Experience launched a body-positive campaign featuring real clients and beauty brand HD Brows unveiled its untouched marketing imagery. 

Grierson asked people interested in being featured in the campaign to post pictures of themselves with no make-up on, and for some clients it was a big step.

“Many said they would never go out without make-up,” added Grierson. “One girl suffered from alopecia, another said they never felt like the stereotypical one in the group.” 

The chosen five applicants will be given a makeover and become “mannequins” for a day in the salon’s window.