The Ordinary: A design student perspective
By Jordan Davies
The brand I chose to focus on is the Ordinary. The Ordinary is a Canadian skincare brand originally released in 2016. The main goals of the Ordinary’s products are to create simple, authentic, and non-traditional products that are one of a kind. It’s pioneering products and branding techniques allows the brand to stand out from its competitors.
The brand reached high popularity at the time of the start of the pandemic. Its high presence on TikTok allowed consumers from all sorts of demographics to become aware of the product. Its affordability, easy access, and approachability made it a huge success. The brand is so successful because it attracts new consumers with product transparency and education, this is achieved by being an approachable brand with approachable packaging that
is honest about the ingredients in each product. Their simple package design matches and compliments their simple ingredients in their products. By having a neutral color scheme with minimal wording and design on the front face of all their packaging, they are speaking through visuals putting an emphasis on the main goal of their brand which is simplicity and honesty. This strategy creates and establishes a trust between the brand and its consumers.
They also aren’t known for their traditional PR, instead, more content is posted on social media and there’s a lot of interaction between the brand and its consumers across multiple platforms. To me, this product is successful because of its genuine, authentic theme that is shown in all aspects throughout their brand. Not only are their products consistently successful, but so is the packaging. You know what you’re getting yourself into when you buy this product and there’s never any surprises. The ordinary knows who their target audience is and executes specific audience targeting perfectly using social media.
Some of the brand’s shortcomings are that the packaging is so minimalistic that it could perhaps blend in with other brands. If you don’t know about the product, the product may not stick out to you because of things like small font size, the neutral packaging etc. Also, even though they have a large presence on social media, that in a way is narrowing down on the audience they’re reaching because with general PR, they could be reaching an even larger number of consumers who don’t use social media. What I learned from this research was a lot about marketing strategies and how that connects deeply with the success of the design. Reputation is huge in design; the ordinary’s reputation has again established a trust with their customers because of their consistency and dedication to creating such a consistent product across the board.
