VIOLÉ · Direction B
A · LuxeB · PopSetsDeck
Direction B · full brand bible

PURPLE WITH A RECEIPT

The only clarifying clay mask whose colour IS its receipt — upcycled mangosteen rind, loud enough to stop the scroll, honest enough to survive the ingredient list.
LogoB · Bold Grotesque
TierMid-tier · $28–38
ICPThe Clean-Curious
Hero channelTikTok — organic-led, Spark-Ads-amplified, closing on TikTok
01 · The campaign

THIS PURPLE CAME OFF A FRUIT.

Everyone in clean beauty is purple because purple is pretty. VIOLÉ is purple because it is literally made from the mangosteen rind — the deep-violet pericarp that gets thrown away by the tonne while everyone eats the white flesh. So the colour is not decoration, it is evidence. Every asset carries the receipt: the fruit, the discarded part, the number, printed onto the colour block as a thermal-receipt strip. This answers all three of her pains at once — it is a story worth posting (the rind reveal), it defuses greenwashing fatigue (we only print what we can back), and it cuts ingredient overwhelm (one hero part, one job, plain English). The device is why this direction can be maximally loud and still read as the most honest thing in the bay: the louder the purple, the more receipts we have to show.

Headline system

THE BEST PART WAS IN THE BIN.
IT'S THE RIND. IT WAS ALWAYS THE RIND.
EVERYBODY EATS THE WRONG PART.
CLARIFYING. NOT PUNISHING.
PURPLE ISN'T A VIBE HERE. IT'S THE INGREDIENT.
THREE MINUTES. ONE FRUIT. NO DRAMA.
WE DIDN'T ADD A DROP OF COLOUR.

Tagline variants: The part they throw away. · Purple with a receipt. · Rind over everything. · Colour with a job. · The Queen's best part was in the bin.

02 · The photography

Shot library

Hero
HeroOpen jar on violet, hard flash, graphic shadow
Flat-lay
Flat-layLilac + lime colour block, jar, tube, mangosteens
Model
ModelGen-Z campaign portrait, mask swipe
Texture macro
Texture macroGlossy vivid swirl, flash-lit
In-use
In-useHand scooping, colourful nails
The range
The rangeJar · tube · sachet, colour-blocked
Lifestyle
LifestyleBright Gen-Z shelf — plant, scrunchie, tiles
Ingredient
IngredientGraphic mangosteens, hard flash
Campaign
CampaignTwo friends laughing, mask swipes

Moodboard

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03 · Art direction

The rules

Governing principles

Do

  • Shoot everything on set with the physical product present and a calibrated grey/colour reference card in the first frame of every setup — the product's violet is a claim.
  • Build backgrounds from painted MDF and coloured perspex, not from paper you will later key — the hard-flash falloff on a real surface is the look.
  • Let the product leave the frame. Crop the tube at the edge; a partial object at scale beats a whole object floating.
  • Alternate shadow direction by asset type (product lower-right, model lower-left) so the 9-grid reads as a designed system, not a repeat.
  • Keep exactly three colours plus the product in any single frame.
  • Shoot the rinse and the wear-time honestly at 2–3 minutes, never as a cracked desert-floor mask.
  • Deliver every hero in 4:5, 9:16 and 1:1 shot to a locked crop grid on the day, not cropped later.

Don't

  • Never put a lime, lemon or any citrus in frame. The lime is a colour, not an ingredient — one misread frame manufactures a false vitamin-C claim.
  • Never use soft light, scrims, beauty dishes, ring-light halos, or a fill card. If it flatters, it is the wrong direction.
  • Never shoot on marble, silk, velvet, or with gold props — that is Logo A / Amethyst Luxe and mixing the two kills both.
  • Never grade the product more purple than the physical sample measures. Lock the product's Lab value across the whole set.
  • Never use shallow depth of field. This world is f/9 and crisp end to end.
  • Never add film grain, halation, bloom, dust overlays or light leaks.
  • Never place two faces adjacent in the grid, and never post a tile that fails the 120px legibility test.
  • Never show the mask fully cracked except in the one deliberate laughing-crack frame.
Colour useWorking ratio per frame: 60% violet #7A3E9D (the field) · 20% lilac #CBB0E6 OR cream #F4EDDF (the second block) · 15% plum-black #180820 (type, shadow, cap — this is the true black point, so shadows read purple, never grey) · 5% ACID LIME #CFF54A (one accent only). Mist #E9DCF0 is the pale ground for swatch and macro work; orchid #A87BC9 is the mid-tone for gradient-free two-purple compositions; amethyst #5B2A78 and grape #3E1B52 are the deep shadow-side purples for the tube's own moulding and for reversed type panels. GOLD #C6A24B IS DEMOTED IN THIS DIRECTION — it belongs to Logo A. Gold appears in exactly one place: the 6mm α-MST science stamp on the seal sticker. Acid lime #CFF54A is a Direction-B-only accent: allowed on the carton base band, the break-seal sticker, and social type cards; capped at 5% of any surface. Print: specify PMS violet 2603 C and a lime in the PMS 388 C region and approve physical drawdowns — never a CMYK build, because #7A3E9D on matte PCR, uncoated board, an OLED phone and an Ulta lightbox are four different purples.
TypographyARCHIVO BLACK is the brand's loud voice: all display, all headlines, ALL CAPS, tracking −3% to −4%, line-height 88–100%, set at a size that forces the frame edge to crop it. Archivo Medium/Regular for body and UI at normal tracking, sentence case, never below 14px on pack. FRAUNCES has exactly one job in Direction B — the italic serif annotation inside the receipt strip and the ingredient name in the data line — so B stays a sibling of Logo A instead of a different company; it never sets a headline here. A monospace (Archivo's tabular figures, or a licensed grotesque mono) sets all receipt/data lines, INCI, batch and volume. NOTO SERIF KR / NOTO SERIF THAI carry 비올레 / วิโอเล่ locked under the Latin wordmark at 60% of Latin cap-height, with font-synthesis disabled (fake-italic on Thai/Korean is a hard reject). Hierarchy rule: one Archivo Black statement, one Archivo body block, one mono receipt line. Three type events per asset, maximum.
Props & materialsWhole mangosteens with the calyx crown intact — sourced fresh, never plastic replicas (the matte leathery skin is unfakeable under flash) · Halved mangosteens showing the white segments, and — the hero prop — the EMPTIED RIND CUP, the discarded half-shell we actually buy · The product itself extruded as a clean ribbon on clear acrylic tiles and on 2mm plexi swatch squares · Matte violet-, lilac- and cream-painted MDF blocks and step risers (matte emulsion, no sheen — sheen creates flash hotspots) · Coloured perspex sheets (violet, lime) used as light-transmitting risers and as hard colour-splits · A real thermal receipt-tape roll, unspooling, printed with the pericarp data lines — the campaign's signature graphic prop · Brushed chrome spatula and tweezers (the only metal permitted; never gold) · Plain clear water in a glass tumbler, running tap water, and clear ice for the rinse setups · Cream paper seamless and uncoated cream board for flat-lays · Everyday context objects for the scale shots: a canvas tote, a plain toothbrush glass, a hair clip
04 · Photography spec

How it's lit and shot

LightingSingle bare flash, no modifier, ever. Key: bare-tube strobe (Profoto A2 / B10 with the standard reflector off) placed on or near the lens axis, 45° above and slightly camera-left for product, straight-on for the snapshot frames. Power set for f/11–f/14 at ISO 100, 1/200s sync. NO fill card, NO scrim, NO bounce — shadows are allowed to run to ~20% density and clip into plum-black #180820. Optional second bare head as a hard kicker at 90° camera-left, 1/4 power, to separate the tube from a same-family violet wall; a #CFF54A lime gel on that kicker gives an ownable acid rim-light on product frames (never on skin). Key:kick ratio 4:1. Shadow direction is locked per asset class for the whole campaign — product shadows fall lower-right, model shadows lower-left — so the grid alternates. On model frames the flash is on-axis, bare, at the camera: the snapshot vernacular is the point, and it also guarantees no purple spill contaminates skin tone. Underexpose product surfaces by 1/3 stop so the clay's grit survives the flash.
CameraFull-frame body, tethered. 85mm for the product heroes (honest proportions, no wide distortion), 50mm for the pack-family and step-riser setups, 35mm for the in-hand and model snapshot frames where the slight distortion reads as real. 100mm macro for the swipe and the clay-texture frames. Aperture f/9–f/14 throughout — this world has NO shallow depth of field; everything is crisp front to back. Flat-lays shot dead overhead on a copy stand or boom, sensor plane parallel to the surface, zero keystone. Product-on-block shot 5–10° above eye level. Shutter 1/200s. Shoot to a locked composite crop grid (4:5 / 9:16 / 1:1) overlaid in capture software so social crops are composed on set, not rescued in post.
CompositionOne subject, one colour block, one shadow, one accent. The product sits on a third, never centred, with 30–40% of the frame left as empty colour for type. The block seam — where two flat colours meet — is always a hard straight horizontal or vertical line, never a curve, never feathered; in 9:16 it sits at 62% frame height with product below and type above. Frame-edge cropping is encouraged: the tube may exit the frame, the headline may be sliced by the edge. Flat-lays are built on an orthogonal grid with deliberate uneven spacing (props aligned to an invisible 12-column grid, never scattered 'organically'). Receipt strip enters from a frame edge, never floats. Every frame must pass the thumbnail test: identifiable and legible at 120px.
Colour gradePunchy, zero-lift, no film emulation. Set the true black point to plum-black #180820 so shadows read purple, not neutral grey. Violet channel only: saturation +12 to +18, HSL purple/magenta luminance −6 so the violet stays dense rather than glowing. Whites held at cream #F4EDDF (−4 blue, +3 yellow) — never paper-white, which fights the carton. Contrast curve with a hard toe and a held highlight shoulder so the flash specular on the tube does not blow to pure white. Skin: no saturation boost on orange, real undertones preserved, no magenta cast permitted. Clarity/texture positive on clay and skin, zero on background blocks. NO grain, NO halation, NO bloom, NO vignette. The product's violet is colour-managed against a measured reference of the physical sample and locked across the entire set — if the retouch is more purple than the tube, the image is a false claim and gets rejected. Deliver sRGB for social/PDP; deliver a separate CMYK/PMS-matched set for print with an approved drawdown.

Shot list

HERO — closed tube, 3/4, standing on a violet block against a lilac wall, hard shadow raking lower-right, 35% empty colour top-left for the headlinePDP image 1 alt, paid static master, the frame every other asset is graded against
TYPE-OVER-PRODUCT — tube small in frame, bottom-right; ARCHIVO BLACK headline occupying ~70% of the canvas, cropped by the frame edgeThe pure scroll-stopper and the thumbnail-test frame; PDP image 1 and the paid-social hero
THE OPEN RIBBON — dead-overhead, a clean ribbon of violet clay extruded onto a clear acrylic tile, one chrome-spatula drag-mark through itTexture proof; kills 'is it thin/gritty/dry' and gives the sensorial hook for video
THE RIND RECEIPT — flat-lay: whole mangosteen, halved mangosteen, and the EMPTIED RIND CUP, with the thermal receipt tape unspooling through the compositionThe upcycle story in a single frame; carousel slide 2 and the single most-saved organic asset
IN-HAND SNAPSHOT — 35mm, talent's hand extending the tube toward the lens, bare on-axis flash, flat wall behind, slight motion in the armScale + ownership; the TikTok-native 'a real person has this' frame
THE SWIPE — 100mm macro of a violet clay stripe across a cheek or forearm, hard flash, visible pores, real texture, zero retouchColour truth and skin honesty; historically the highest-CTR asset class in this category
WEARING IT — 3/4 beauty portrait, mask on at 2–3 minutes, eyes OPEN, direct to lens, unbothered expression (never the serene spa-eyes-closed cliché)The identity frame — the 'I would post this' moment; hero for the seeding and the profile grid
THE RINSE — over-sink, water running over hands as the violet dilutes to lilac, hard flash catching the water, white porcelain visible and cleanPreemptively kills the staining objection, which is the #1 unspoken conversion blocker on a saturated mask
COLOUR-BLOCK PACK FAMILY — tube + carton on stepped perspex risers across a three-colour block (violet / lilac / cream) with one lime bandRetail, PDP 'what you get', Amazon A+ module, wholesale line sheet
SIZE-IN-CONTEXT — tube on a bathroom shelf or in an open tote with ordinary objects, hard flash, deliberately unstyledAmazon scale image; answers 'how big is 50ml really' and reads as un-precious
THE CRACKED SMILE — talent laughing with the mask on, the surface visibly cracking at the smile linesThe single most shareable frame, and an honest depiction of clay behaviour; one per talent, unposed
05 · Casting & talent

Who's in frame

BriefCast for personality and skin honesty, not beauty-industry symmetry. She reads like a 26-year-old who would genuinely say 'the RIND?' out loud and mean it. Cast a group, not a muse: 5–6 people across the campaign so the brand reads as a community. At least two must have visibly texture-honest skin — healing blemishes, post-inflammatory marks, visible pores — because the ICP is blemish-prone and a flawless cast destroys credibility instantly. Book 3 of 6 slots as creators rather than models: people who can talk to camera in their own words and who own a real audience, because half the asset bank is theirs. Include at least one Korean speaker and one Thai speaker for the 비올레 / วิโอเล่ market cuts.
Age range22–36, clustered hard at 25–30. Do not cast under 22 — this direction's reference set (Starface, Bubble) skews teen-acne and the ICP is a notch older and more discerning. One 34–36 face keeps the brand from reading juvenile.
LookCombination, congested and blemish-prone skin represented explicitly and unretouched. Diverse across Black, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Latina and white talent. Real hair textures welcomed and encouraged: 4C coils, box braids, a bleached buzz, a slick low bun, a wet-set crop. Book at least one face with a definite irregularity — a gap tooth, dense freckles, a birthmark, a strong brow. Bodies and faces that photograph as themselves under bare flash, which is unforgiving and is exactly why it is credible here. No cosmetic-uniform casting, no fillers-forward faces, no 'clean girl' homogeneity.
Hair & make-upSkin first. On every mask frame: ZERO base — no foundation, no concealer, no colour correcting, no powder. Groomed brows and a clear lip balm only. On non-mask frames, exactly ONE graphic gesture per look — a violet inner-corner liner, an acid-lime nail, a high-gloss lip — one, never a full beat, never a smoky eye. Hair styled to a decisive silhouette (slicked flat, clipped up, or deliberately big) so it holds a clean edge against the colour block; no beachy waves, no wet-look editorial gel, no 'undone' styling that muddies the outline. Skin prepped with a bare minimum of moisturiser and blotted 5 minutes before shooting so the flash does not read as grease.
WardrobeSolid, saturated basics that colour-block against the ground. Core kit per talent: a plain white ribbed tank, a lilac tee, a cream crewneck, a plum-black tank, one acid-lime piece per shoot day. Nothing patterned, no visible logos, no denim texture on hero frames. Jewellery limited to one bold silver hoop or one chunky ring — no gold, which belongs to Logo A. Necks and shoulders exposed on all mask frames. HARD RULE: if the talent stands on a violet wall, the wardrobe cannot be violet — a minimum one-tone jump so the silhouette survives the flash.
Direction notesDirect them to LOOK AT THE LENS. This world has no dreamy middle distance and no closed eyes. Ask for reactions, not poses: hand them the sealed tube, break the lime seal on camera, and shoot the first three seconds. Get one frame per person laughing with the mask on until it cracks — that is the campaign's most shareable asset and it is also honest about how clay behaves. Shoot a 15-second vertical of each person saying one sentence, in their own words, about the rind — that is the UGC bank and the reason we cast creators. Never coach them into brand language; if they say 'detox', reshoot and hand them the DO/DON'T card, because their words become our claim. Shoot the rinse with the same person who applied it — continuity of face across apply→wear→rinse is what makes the sequence believable.
06 · Voice

How it talks

The smartest friend in the group chat who actually reads the INCI. Confident, plainspoken, dry-funny, never cute and never guru. Headlines ALL CAPS, short, declarative, no hedging. Body lowercase, second person, one idea per line, sentence fragments allowed. Every claim block ends on a subtraction — the thing it does NOT do — because that is what buys her trust after five years of greenwashing. Bold is not juvenile: no slang, no emoji in owned copy, no exclamation stacking. If a sentence could be said by any other clean brand, cut it.

Do

  • Name the part, not the fruit: 'pericarp', 'the rind', 'the part they throw away' — the specificity IS the differentiator.
  • State the number when we have one (% upcycled, minutes on skin, times per week, ml) and say nothing when we don't.
  • Say 'studied ingredient' with the qualifier attached every single time: 'two human studies back the ingredient, delivered encapsulated — not this mask.'
  • Volunteer the limits before she asks: 'it is not a treatment', 'it is not a treatment', 'it is not a lightening product'.
  • Name the enemy by behaviour, never by the banned word: masks that leave skin tight. Attack the category behaviour, never a competitor brand.
  • Write for sound-off first — the on-screen line must carry the whole idea in under 7 words.
  • Talk about colour as a consequence ('the rind is that colour'), never as a feature ('gorgeous violet').

Don't

  • Never: detox, toxins, draws out impurities, purges, pulls out, flushes — including in creator captions and comment replies.
  • Never: anti-aging, ageless, youth, fine lines, wrinkle, firm, lift, collagen-boosting.
  • Never: whitening, brightening, lightening, fairness, tone-correcting, glass skin (implies whitening in our markets).
  • Never: treats, cures, heals, clears, eliminates acne / breakouts / blemishes. 'For blemish-prone skin' is the ceiling.
  • Never: 'clinically proven', 'dermatologist proven', 'proven mask', or any construction that transfers the ingredient RCTs onto the finished product.
  • Never: bare 'clean', 'non-toxic', 'chemical-free', 'natural' as virtue claims with nothing behind them.
  • Never: 'infused with', 'harnessing the power of', 'nature's secret', 'ancient wisdom', wellness-guru softness, or em-dash-heavy literary prose. That is Logo A's register, not B's.
  • Never: Gen-Z slang or meme-speak in owned copy (creators may sound like themselves; the brand does not cosplay them).

Sample body copy

Mangosteen has a nickname — the Queen of Fruits — and everybody eats the wrong part. The white flesh is the snack. The thick purple rind is the pericarp, and that is where the xanthones are. It is also what gets thrown out, by the tonne, every day. We buy the rind. VIOLÉ No.01 is a clay wash-off mask built on upcycled mangosteen pericarp, delivered encapsulated so the active is protected from oxidation. Kaolin and rhassoul do the clarifying. Two human studies back the ingredient — the ingredient, not this mask, and we will keep saying it that way. Two to three minutes. Twice a week. Combination, congested, dull. It rinses out lilac. It will not strip you. It is a purifying ten minutes with an actual reason to be purple. And the purple is just the rind. We didn't add a drop of colour.
07 · Packaging

The object

Primary50ml AIRLESS TUBE — not a jar. Matte violet #7A3E9D PCR-PP body (matte lacquer, explicitly NOT soft-touch, which scuffs and reads cheap under hard flash). The Archivo Black VIOLÉ wordmark runs reversed in cream #F4EDDF across the widest face at ~60% of tube width with −4% tracking; 비올레 / วิโอเล่ locked beneath at 60% cap-height in Noto Serif KR/Thai. A 4mm cream RECEIPT BAND wraps the shoulder, set in mono: PERICARP · UPCYCLED · NO.01 · 50ML e 1.69 FL OZ. Cap: flat matte plum-black #180820, no dome, with a blind-embossed V on the crown. 2mm orifice for a clean ribbon dispense — the swipe shot and the ASMR content both depend on that ribbon. The airless format is a talking point, not a compromise: no jar, no fingers, no oxygen, and it is the chemist's requirement for an antioxidant-led formula.
SecondaryCream #F4EDDF uncoated folding carton, 350gsm SBS. INVERSE of the tube so the two read as a set rather than a repeat: cream front, violet wordmark. Front panel carries the wordmark, one descriptor line (Antioxidant Clarifying Clay Mask), and a DIE-CUT WINDOW in the shape of the mangosteen cross-section ('La Coupe') revealing the actual violet tube. An 8mm acid-lime #CFF54A band runs the bottom edge with the claim-safe line. Back panel is the RECEIPT BLOCK: the upcycle story set in mono, the honest what-it-won't-do lines, full INCI, and the QR. Flood violet appears on the inside of the carton only — a colour reveal on opening.
Materials & finishesTube: ≥50% PCR-PP, mono-material where the airless mechanism allows, matte flexo print, no lamination so it stays recyclable · Carton: FSC-certified uncoated cream SBS 350gsm — offset plus one PMS violet (2603 C) and one PMS lime (388 C region), approved on physical drawdowns not a CMYK build · Blind deboss of the La Coupe mangosteen cross-section on the carton front, adjacent to the die-cut · NO FOIL anywhere in Direction B (foil is Logo A's territory) — with one deliberate exception: a 6mm gold #C6A24B α-MST stamp on the break-seal sticker, the single 'we did the science' cue · Break-seal sticker: 25mm circular, acid lime, perforated thermal-receipt edge, La Coupe mark debossed — designed to be torn on camera · Insert card: 90×120mm cream, printed both sides in true thermal-receipt format — the how-to (2–3 min, 2×/week), the honesty block, batch, and the ingredient-page QR · No shrink wrap, no tissue paper, no plastic void fill, no ribbon, no printed mailer liner
UnboxingThree objects, ten seconds, nothing to bin. Cream carton → the acid-lime seal tears along its perforation (the designed shareable beat, engineered to sound and look good in a 9:16 close-up) → the carton opens to a violet-flooded interior → the RECEIPT CARD falls out first, formatted as an actual receipt so it gets photographed → the violet tube sits naked underneath, no bag, no sleeve. The die-cut window means she has already seen the colour before opening, so the reveal is confirmation rather than surprise — which is exactly the trust dynamic this brand sells.
Sustainability cueThe upcycle IS the sustainability story — say it that way and nowhere else. The one printed claim is 'made from the part that gets thrown away' with the actual upcycled-input percentage stated on the receipt block. Packaging supports it quietly: FSC uncoated board, PCR tube, an insert that doubles as the only paper, zero secondary plastic. DO NOT print a leaf, a globe, a recycling swirl, a green tint, or the words eco / natural / sustainable / clean anywhere on pack — this ICP has greenwashing fatigue and every one of those marks costs credibility. If a certification is not held, it is not printed. If a number cannot be substantiated by the supply chain, it is not printed.
08 · Channels & launch

Where it lives

Content pillars

THE RIND REVEALCut a mangosteen on camera, eat/discard the white flesh, hold up the rind. 'Everybody eats the wrong part.' The most repeatable, most stitchable, most duettable format we own — a fruit-cutting video with a payoff. Runs weekly, in every creator's own hands, and is the top-of-funnel engine. Never needs the product in the first 3 seconds.
THE RECEIPT20–30s ingredient-literacy explainers: one INCI line, what it actually does, and one thing it does NOT do. Directly attacks ingredient overwhelm and greenwashing fatigue. Format is fixed — receipt tape on screen, mono type, one fact, one subtraction. This is the pillar that earns the right to be loud everywhere else.
THE SWIPE & THE CRACKSensorial, sound-on, no voiceover: the ribbon out of the airless tube, the spread, the 3-minute dry-down, the crack at a smile, the rinse from violet to lilac down a white sink. Pure ASMR-adjacent retention bait that also silently kills the texture and staining objections.
ESTHETICIAN & DERM DUETSHand it to estheticians who will genuinely critique it and invite the hostile question on camera: 'is this just a purple gimmick?' Answer it with the encapsulation and the two human ingredient studies, qualifier attached. Reactive, credibility-buying, and the pillar that converts the sceptical half of the ICP.
NOT-A-DETOXA stitch-and-reply pillar taking on 'detox' masks and over-stripping mask culture head-on — the category behaviour, never a named competitor. The brand's one enemy, one clear position, engineered for comment volume. Doubles as our compliance shield: we are on record refusing the claim everyone else makes.
Hero channelTikTok — organic-led, Spark-Ads-amplified, closing on TikTok Shop. Her discovery happens here; more importantly the product's entire differentiator (cutting a fruit, discarding the flesh, keeping the rind, then wearing the result) is a VIDEO argument, not a still one. Shopify DTC is the margin and data surface, Amazon is the search-capture surface, Ulta.com is the credibility surface — but none of them are where she is convinced.
Social gridA strict three-column rhythm so the profile reads as one designed poster rather than a feed. Column 1 = product on a violet colour block. Column 2 = face / model / creator UGC on a lilac or cream ground. Column 3 = type-only statement card, plum-black Archivo Black on cream or acid lime. Scrolling down, the background rotates violet → lilac → cream → violet, which produces a visible diagonal stripe across the grid — the thing that makes a profile screenshot-worthy. Every third row may break with one full-bleed acid-lime card. Hard rules: never two faces adjacent; no collages; carousels are not grid filler; and every tile must be identifiable at 120px or it does not post. Bio and highlight covers use the La Coupe mark, not the wordmark.
Launch beatT-21 — SEEDING WITHOUT THE PRODUCT: 40 creators receive an unbranded box containing a whole mangosteen and a card asking them to eat it and guess which part ends up in a skincare product. Content lands with no product visible. Builds the question and generates the organic hook we will later buy. T-7 — REVEAL: the tube drops as a three-tile violet panorama across the grid plus the hero film; waitlist opens; the die-cut carton is shown for the first time. T-0 — LAUNCH DAY: 60–90 minute TikTok Shop live with three creators cycling, the rind cut running on repeat, and a launch-day-only lime-seal bundle. Spark Ads run from hour one behind the three best-performing SEEDING videos — never behind studio assets on day one. T+14 — the NOT-A-DETOX stitch wave and the esthetician duets go live; whichever creator asset over-indexes becomes the paid hero and gets a studio re-shoot in the Purple-Pop set. T+30 — Amazon and Ulta.com listings go live using the studio set that TikTok has already validated. Do not list earlier: let the platform pick the winning image before it becomes the PDP hero.
Retail momentOn an Ulta endcap or in a mass-clean bay, every competitor is white, sage, or millennial pink. A cream carton with a violet die-cut window and an acid-lime break-seal is the only high-chroma object in the fixture and it reads at three metres. The die-cut is the closer: she can see the ACTUAL violet product through a mangosteen-cross-section window, which verifies the colour claim before purchase and defuses the exact objection ('is it really that purple / is it dyed?') that kills conversion — a physical proof no competitor's opaque carton can offer. Sightline priority is wordmark → window → lime band; the receipt block is the pick-up-and-turn reward. PDP / A+ sequence is fixed: (1) type-over-product scroll-stopper, because thumbnail legibility decides the click; (2) the rind receipt flat-lay — why this exists; (3) the swipe on real skin — colour and texture proof; (4) the rinse — objection kill, placed before anyone can ask; (5) the receipt card as a graphic — how-to plus the honesty block, which is the trust conversion; (6) size-in-context. On TikTok Shop the product-card thumbnail is the tube on flat violet with the wordmark legible at 88px — no hands, no lifestyle, no model, because the card is a logo test not a mood test. Amazon: the rind reveal is the video slot, and 'upcycled mangosteen pericarp' is the search term we own outright because nobody else in the category is using the word.
09 · Before this ships

What the review caught

This direction was stress-tested by an adversarial creative director + cosmetics claims reviewer. Verdict: NEEDS_SHARPENING. The overclaims below have already been corrected in the copy on this page — these are logged so nothing silently creeps back in.

⚠ Stop-work item — the colour claim. The whole campaign leans on "nothing was added to make it this colour." A kaolin+rhassoul base is beige-grey and pericarp extract reads reddish-brown, so a saturated amethyst from extract alone is formulation-implausible — and the earlier chemist review independently flagged that the hue is fragile at pH 4.8–5.5 and browns on ageing. Get the bench sample + a 12-week accelerated colour-drift study BEFORE this line goes on carton artwork. If any colorant appears on the INCI, this becomes a false statement on pack, aimed at the exact customer most likely to catch it.

Claims flagged & fixed

  • "" — this is the sample_body_copy, i.e. OWNED brand copy, and it prints the exact word its own dont-list bans ("Never: detox, toxins, draws out impurities..."). Meta/TikTok/Amazon ad review and retailer copy screens are LEXICAL, not semantic — a negated "toxins" still trips the filter and still puts the word in the consumer's head. Cleverness is not a defence.
  • "" (body copy) and "it is not a treatment" (voice.do) — the word "acne" appears in owned copy. Under FDA logic, acne is a drug-claim territory; repeatedly invoking it, even in denial, creates the intended-use association a reviewer reads for. The permitted ceiling is "for blemish-prone skin" and the copy should not travel past it in either direction.
  • "it is not a lightening product" (voice.do) — prints "brighten", against a dont-list that bans brightening precisely because it implies whitening in KR/TH. Same negation trap as above, with an added market-specific risk given the 비올레 / วิโอเล่ lockups.
  • "delivered encapsulated so the active is protected from oxidation" — an unsubstantiated delivery/bioavailability claim at FINISHED-PRODUCT level. "Still intact when it reaches your face" asserts stability + delivery performance the two ingredient RCTs do not cover. This is exactly the transfer the bible elsewhere forbids.
  • "THIS PURPLE CAME OFF A FRUIT." and "We didn't add a drop of colour." — an absolute no-added-colorant claim carried as the HERO headline. It is false the moment ANY colour-contributing input appears on the INCI: a pigment in the encapsulation shell, a standardising carrier, the clay's own tint correction, or a stabiliser. Nothing in this bible names the verification gate. A single INCI line kills
  • "The only clarifying clay mask whose colour IS its receipt" — an unqualified "the only" superiority claim. Substantiable in principle, but it requires a documented competitor sweep on file and re-checking at each retailer onboarding. Nobody has assigned that.

Other fixes applied

  • voice.sample_body_copy, final paragraphDelete "" and "" outright. You cannot ban a word list and then print the word list. Replace the whole subtraction paragraph with limits stated WITHOUT the banned nouns: "It will not strip you. It is not a treatment, and it is not a substitute for one. It is three minutes of clay, twice a week, with an actual reason to be purple." You keep the honesty move and lose every screenable keyword.
  • voice.do, bullet 4 ("Volunteer the limits before she asks")Rewrite the examples so the discipline survives without printing banned terms. Change to: "Volunteer the ceiling before she asks — 'this is a mask, not a treatment', 'it is made for blemish-prone skin, it does not act on blemishes', 'it does one job'. State the limit as what the product IS, never by naming the outcome it does not deliver." Add a hard rule: never name a banned outcome in order to deny it.
  • voice.sample_body_copy vs campaign.headline_system vs art_direction.do (wear time)Lock ONE wear time across the whole system and propagate it to pack directions-for-use, PDP, and every asset. "ten minutes" in the body copy is a direct contradiction of "Two to three minutes" and "THREE MINUTES. ONE FRUIT." (Direction A adds a fourth number at six minutes.) Pick the number the formula actually requires, then add a line to the bible: usage numbers are label copy and change only via a regulatory sign-off, never in a copy pass.
  • campaign.hero_headline + tagline_variants ("We didn't add a drop of colour")Gate the hero headline behind a signed formulation attestation BEFORE the shoot is booked. Require the supplier and formulator to confirm on paper that no colour-contributing input exists anywhere in the chain — including the encapsulation shell, any standardising carrier, and any clay tint correction. If a single colour-contributing input exists, the headline becomes "The purple is the rind" (a statement of origin) rather than "we didn't add a drop of colour" (an absolute negative). Also confirm the physical sample actually reads violet and not mauve-brown; the entire direction is unrecoverable if it does not.
  • art_direction.colour_use (acid lime #CFF54A)Cut the lime. It is not in the supplied VIOLÉ palette, it imports the exact purple/lime pairing already running in the dopamine-beauty set, it forces a defensive art-direction rule against citrus in frame, and a green accent on a fruit-derived product invites a green-tea/citrus misread. Replace the pressure valve with cream #F4EDDF at high contrast against grape #3E1B52, or reinstate gold #C6A24B as a hairline rule rather than demoting it off-palette. If the lime survives, it must be added to the master palette by decision, not smuggled in by one direction.
  • art_direction.props_materials ("A real thermal receipt-tape roll")Replace with an uncoated or BPA-free phenol-free receipt stock, and say so on the spec line. Thermal receipt paper is a known BPA/BPS carrier and it fades — a sustainability-forward upcycled brand making chemical-coated fade-prone paper its signature prop is a one-tweet own-goal, and the fading undercuts the "proof / permanence" metaphor the device exists to carry.
  • photography.colour_grade vs art_direction.dont ("Never grade the product more purple than These two rules are in direct conflict — a global violet-channel saturation lift of +12 to +18 will push the product past the measured sample. Resolve it as a hard tolerance: grade the BACKGROUND and set only; the product is masked out of the violet saturation move and must land within a stated ΔE tolerance (e.g. ΔE ≤ 2.0) of the measured physical sample. Name who checks it and at what stage (retouch QC, before delivery).
  • positioning_line ("The only clarifying clay mask whose colour IS its receipt")Either drop "the only" or assign an owner and a cadence for the competitive sweep that substantiates it, and mark the line internal-use-only if it is never intended to run. Superiority claims re-open every time a retailer onboards the SKU.

Live risk watch-outs

  • PURPLE-AS-COLORANT MISREAD — the single biggest risk. A high-saturation violet in a high-energy world reads DYED. Mitigate structurally: every asset carries a colour-source cue (rind in frame or the receipt line), the FAQ leads with it, and the physical sample's Lab value is measured and hard-locked across the entire shoot. If a retouched frame is more purple than the tube in hand, that image is a false claim and gets killed — no exceptions, including paid variants.
  • CLAIM CREEP IN CREATOR HANDS — this is the direction that hands the mic away, and creators say 'detox', 'cleared my acne', 'brightened me'. A creator claim reads as our claim under FTC/FDA. Ship a one-page DO/DON'T card in every seeding box, put the banned-word list and a re-cut clause in the contract, run a weekly keyword sweep on branded mentions and comments, and never let brand accounts like or reply to a video containing a banned claim.
  • GEN-Z-GIMMICK DRIFT — the visual reference set (Starface, Bubble) skews teen-acne while the ICP is 24–38 and more discerning. Guard rails: casting clusters at 25–30, copy carries zero slang, and THE RECEIPT pillar must hold at least 40% of content volume. Bold is not juvenile; the moment the brand sounds like a meme account, the $28–38 price stops being defensible.
  • RECREATING THE PAIN WE SELL AGAINST — she distrusts over-stripping 'detox' clay. If we shoot the mask as a cracked desert floor or show 15-minute wear, we become the thing. Always depict 2–3 minutes, always pair a mask frame with a rinse frame, and allow the cracked look ONLY in the deliberate laughing-crack asset where it reads as human, not as punishment.
  • STAINING ANXIETY — a deeply pigmented mask triggers 'will it stain my towel, my sink, my skin?'. Lab-verify rinse-off on white terry, a light-grey sink and three skin tones BEFORE any asset ships; answer it in shot 7 and in the FAQ unprompted. If it stains even slightly, say so first and give the fix — a discovered stain destroys more trust than a disclosed one.
  • LIME DRIFT — the fastest way to cheapen this direction is a second accent colour or a lime-heavy asset. Lock lime at ≤5% of area and one instance per composition in the guide as a NUMBER, not a vibe, and reject assets on that metric.
  • COLOUR REPRODUCTION ACROSS SUBSTRATES — #7A3E9D on matte PCR, on uncoated board, on an OLED phone and under an Ulta lightbox are four different purples, and the whole brand argument is that the purple is true. Approve physical drawdowns, specify PMS not CMYK builds, and include the tube and the carton in the same frame at least once per shoot so the two purples are proven to match.
  • FLASH FLATTENS THE PROOF — hard flash on saturated violet tends to blow out the clay's grit and the skin's pores, which are the two things making this product read real. Underexpose product surfaces 1/3 stop and inspect texture at 100% before approving any frame; a beautiful, textureless hero is an off-brand hero.
  • LOGO A / LOGO B COLLISION — if the premium SKU launches alongside, A and B must never appear in the same asset, the same shelf set, or the same PDP. Mixed, B reads as a diffusion line and A reads as unaffordable. Separate channels, separate photography kits, separate prop libraries; the only shared asset is the La Coupe symbol.
  • SUPPLY-STORY FRAGILITY — the upcycle claim is the entire concept, so the upcycled-input percentage on pack must be substantiated by the contract manufacturer and the rind supply chain in writing before it is printed. A single unverifiable number turns the brand's greatest asset into its greatest liability with exactly the audience least willing to forgive it.