Creating a new beauty shopping experience that delivers on the best of two brands

Little Black Book, The work In 2021, Target announced plans to put a new Ulta Beauty shop-in-shop experience inside more than 800 Target locations. As the national rollout of Ulta Beauty at Target approached, Target challenged us to blueprint an elevated prestige beauty experience—in-store and digital—that would deliver on the best of both industry leaders. To do so, we dove deep into beauty culture and dissected the beauty discovery journey, gathering invaluable insights from consumers along the way. Our roles Experience Strategy and Design Customer Journey Design Category and Customer Insights The Opportunity Prestige beauty that transcends brand. Zeus Jones partnered closely with Target to design a holistic, omnichannel shopping experience that served the needs of both Target and Ulta guests. Together, we created an experience strategy that has informed marketing, design and store experience, serving as a blueprint for both retailers’ teams as they continue to define the experience. Our Approach Unfiltered insights inform a shopping experience rooted in emotion. One of the first things we did during our custom qualitative research was to consult beauty consumers, including guests from both retailers. These guests gave us candid insight into the ideal customer journey and experience principles by sharing their discovery and shopping habits. Ulta guests in particular didn’t hold back: These superfans had especially strong opinions about how beauty discovery should feel. We knew that a good experience wouldn’t be enough—Ulta Beauty at Target had to live up to Ulta guests’ lofty expectations and meet their passion for beauty culture. Once we identified key guest insights, we defined key emotional marker moments, visualized a non-linear customer journey rooted in those moments and developed core principles for how the experience should feel. Using rapid prototyping principles, we quickly showed how it could all come to life across in-store and digital spaces. We mapped out dozens of ideas that could enable guests to seamlessly find their favourites while empowering them to experiment with new products, including a plan to link the Target and Ulta rewards programs—which we learned from consumers was a make-or-break moment in the experience. The Outcome A new frontier of beauty discovery based on what real beauty lovers want. Our unique insight into Target and Ulta guest cultures helped the retailers create an experience that would resonate with both groups, while appealing to new guests. As the national rollout launched, Ulta Beauty at Target grabbed attention from beauty influencers and media, with guests praising the shop-in-shop experience, in particular the linked rewards programs. Throughout the project, we coordinated ongoing input from a cross-functional advisory committee of Target and Ulta Beauty internal stakeholders. These sessions allowed us to collaborate with them during each stage of the process and create ownership and buy-in across both teams. Our work on Ulta Beauty at Target led to additional projects, including experience design for the merging of the retailer’s Essentials and Beauty categories, as well as a reposition of its owned outdoor recreation brand, Embark. “In order to really meet Ulta Beauty fans’ expectations, the rewards program integration had to be there from day one. We provided guidance on what that seamless experience could look like, and part of the project was helping Target understand the importance of integrating Ulta rewards and Target Circle,” said, Amanda Zweerink, strategist and partner at Zeus Jones 🔗 See the full case study .