Beauty Unlimited Live

Sometimes the format disappears, but the objective remains.

Beauty Unlimited Live was originally conceived as an in-person Edgars Beauty experience. When Covid-19 restrictions made the physical launch impossible, the challenge was not simply to move the event online.

We had to reconsider what made the experience valuable in the first place and find a different way to deliver it.

With approximately 12 hours to respond, the physical event became a live digital beauty experience designed to reach audiences across South Africa.

Moving from a room to a screen changes the rules.

Guests can no longer move naturally between products, conversations and demonstrations. Attention has to be directed. Transitions matter differently. Sets need to work through a camera rather than around a guest. Presenters and influencers need to communicate to an audience they cannot physically see.

The entire experience therefore had to be reconsidered for broadcast.

Scripts, influencer talking points, set design, styling and production flow were developed around how audiences would encounter the experience through a screen rather than attempting to recreate the physical event literally.

The objective was to preserve the aspiration, discovery and energy associated with an Edgars Beauty launch while allowing the new format to behave naturally as digital content.

The compressed timeline demanded unusually fast decision-making.

Creative direction, scriptwriting, styling, set design and production needed to move almost simultaneously, with every decision assessed according to what would ultimately appear in frame.

There was little room for decorative thinking.

Sets needed to establish distinct brand environments quickly. Presenters needed clear narrative roles. Product moments needed to read immediately. The running order needed enough structure to guide the audience while retaining the spontaneity of a live experience.

Icity TV captured the production, translating the physical sets, demonstrations and presenter interactions into the broadcast audiences ultimately experienced.

The project reinforced an idea that became increasingly important during that period: digital experience should not be treated as a lesser version of physical experience.

Each format has different strengths.

A physical environment creates proximity, atmosphere and spontaneous human interaction. Digital removes geography, changes the potential scale of an audience and creates different opportunities for content and participation.

The job is not to force one format to behave like the other.

It is to understand what the experience is trying to achieve and design appropriately for the environment available.

Beauty Unlimited Live transformed an unexpected constraint into a different kind of audience opportunity.

More importantly, it demonstrated that experience design is not defined by a venue, a stage or even physical presence.

When circumstances change, the format can change with them without abandoning the purpose of the idea.