VOIS

VOIS is a beauty and personal care brand that offers products designed for hair and skin care. The brand positions itself as a modern, accessible, and aesthetically appealing solution for consumers who value self-care, beauty, and wellbeing. The brand communicates not only product benefits but also broader lifestyle values related to confidence, self-care, and personal improvement.

The mission of VOIS is to make high-quality self-care products accessible while encouraging consumers to prioritize their wellbeing and develop healthy beauty routines: «Since the first days of launch in 2022, we have been focusing on the main thing: listening and listening to audience requests and translating them into our products so that you don’t have to choose between quality and accessibility, follow other people’s rules and build a multi-stage pyramid of care.» — is stated on the brand’s website.

The brand develops several communication channels. The main of them for VOIS are Social network platforms. The content includes: product presentations, beauty tips, educational posts and user reviews. These channels allow the brand to communicate directly with consumers and maintain constant engagement. VOIS also collaborates with beauty influencers and content creators who present products to their audience through reviews, tutorials, and personal recommendations. Moreover, consumer reviews through lifestyle content play an important role in building trust and social validity.

The brand also has a website that functions as an e-commerce platform, source of product information and a tool for creating brand stories: consumers can access detailed product descriptions, ingredient information, and recommendations.

Last but not least, the brand is widely represented on marketplaces: this is where VOIS encounters the majority of its audience at the lowest level of conscious engagement: the consumer is scrolling through search results rather than actively exploring the brand. The incredible amount of reviews serves as an immediate confirmation of social significance, bypassing the need for an independent evaluation of the product. The visual appeal of the bright packages allows you to quickly recognise it in an algorithmically processed feed. At the same time, for consumers who click on the product card, the brand provides detailed information about the ingredients, instructions for use, and sellers' responses to reviews — the main resources for a group of consumers whose engagement level increases after they were not directly involved.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in the 1980s was chosen as the analytical basis for this project. According to the theory, persuasion occurs through two routes: central route that involves careful evaluation of information where consumers analyse product characteristics, ingredients, effectiveness, evidence and arguments and forms a stronger, more stable and resistant to change attitude and peripheral route which is based on simple signs that affect perception without deep information processing (emotions, aesthetics, approval from influencers etc). Attitude change produced through the peripheral route is weaker and less durable than that produced centrally — it can shift immediate behaviour without fundamentally altering underlying beliefs.

The cosmetics industry provides an ideal context for ELM, as consumers often rely on both rational and emotional factors when making purchase decisions. The brand operates in the mass-demand cosmetics market on Russian marketplaces, where the vast majority of purchase decisions are made by consumers with a low level of informed participation: they look through a selection of products compiled using algorithms and quickly evaluate them. In this context, a peripheral method of persuasion is structural silence. However, the analytical feature of VOIS is that it did not just accept this omission. Instead, she built a communication architecture that simultaneously uses peripheral signals for the low-engagement majority and core arguments for the high-engagement minority — and did so in a way that allows the same communicative content to perform both functions, depending on the level of training of the consumer who encounters it.

The peripheral route is the dominant mоde of interaction for most customers, and the brand uses peripheral signals with exeptional systematic efficiency. According to ELM, attractive visual elements can influence product attitudes. VOIS uses minimalist (fashionable) packaging, modern typography, aesthetically pleasing color palette and clean visual design. These elements indirectly speak about professionalism, quality and reliability: even if consumers don’t pay enough attention to analyzing product information, visual appeal can create a positive impression. Thus, packaging serves as an additional means of persuasion.

Another example of peripheral persuasion — maintaining a visually stable social media presence by the brand, which is characterized by: attractive photos, clean layouts, good lifestyle images and aesthetics focused on beauty. These visual cues evoke positive emotions and enhance the brand’s attractiveness. For consumers with a low level of engagement, such content can significantly affect their attitudes and intentions to make a purchase.

Another important secondary factor identified by ELM is trust in the source of information. When influencers recommend VOIS products, consumers can transfer their positive perception to the brand. Instead of analysing product information in detail, consumers rely on the reliability of the source. As a result, partnerships with influencers can effectively increase brand awareness and desire to make a purchase.

According to ELM, emotional reactions can act as peripheral signals that influence brand attitudes. VOIS often associates its products with emotional attractiveness and self-care. These messages elicit positive emotional reactions, so consumers may have a favourable perception of VOIS, as the brand begins to be associated with desired feelings and experiences.

While the peripheral route accounts for the majority of VOIS’s commercial reach, the brand has made meaningful investment in central route communication — constructing a set of strong elaborated arguments designed to produce durable attitude change in the high-involvement consumer segment. VOIS regularly publishes educational content and key recommendations explaining: ingredients, product functions, beauty treatments and proper use of the product. This information encourages consumers to process messages through a centralised channel. By providing useful and detailed information, VOIS facilitates informed decision-making and increases trust in it. This way, communication relies on rational arguments, not just emotional appeals.

Useful ingredients and product features are always highlighted in product cards and promotional materials.

Moreover, publications often combine educational information with aesthetic visual. This approach allows the brand to reach consumers with different levels of engagement: highly motivated consumers receive detailed information through the central channel, while less engaged consumers respond to peripheral signals. By combining both channels, VOIS maximizes the effectiveness of its communication.

An analysis of VOIS’s communication strategy through the Elaboration Likelihood Model shows that the brand has built a system of persuasion that is rare in its effectiveness and works simultaneously on two levels. For a wide audience with a low level of engagement, the brand uses peripheral signals — first of all, social proof in the form of 1.6 million verified reviews, recognizable packaging and a network of 200 bloggers. For a motivated audience ready for deeper study, the brand offers meaningful arguments: ingredient transparency, public formula versioning and co-creation documentation. Of particular value is the fact that the same content — for example, audience participation in product development — works as a peripheral cue for some consumers and as a strong central route argument for others. The main weakness of the strategy is that entertainment content on social media does not always match the level of substance that a brand promises to its audience through a narrative of co-creation.

Based on the analysis, several areas can be identified for improving the brand’s communication strategy. First of all, the presence of VOIS on VKontakte and TikTok is now focused primarily on entertainment content and peripheral signals — the introducing a dedicated content stream with meaningful arguments about the ingredients, formula development rationale and efficacy evidence will allow a motivated consumer to move from superficial interest to sustained loyalty. In parallel, the brand should build explicit pathways from peripheral content to deeper content, for example, through bloggers' videos with links to composition pages or formula update stories, which will increase the share of the audience ready for deeper interaction with the brand. It is also important to systematize formula versioning communication: each update should be accompanied by a clear description of what has changed, why, and what audience input has caused it — only with this level of specificity does versioning remain a strong argument for the central route, and not just a marketing narrative. Finally, Telegram*, as a channel with long texts, detailed content, and open discussions, is most suitable for working with a highly engaged audience. The brand should invest in its development as a space for educational content about ingredients and meaningful dialogue with the community.

(*Telegram is recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in the Russian Federation)