Sustainable. Clean. Low tox. Eco-friendly. 

They’re some of the ubiquitous claims splashed across packaging, website and advertising material to draw in an audience considerate about ingredients that touch their skin.

These groundbreaking claims once disrupted their respective industries, introducing concepts like ‘clean beauty’ to customers who sought to put more thought into the products they use. This type of language started out authentic, but quickly became trendy, widespread and over-used as brands latched onto buzzwords and phrases that would check a box in customers’ minds — without providing transparent details about whether their products truly lived up to the standard that sustainable and eco-conscious brands had set. 

Phrases like ‘clean’ became watered down to the point where they no longer held significance or created trust. This effect is known as ‘greenwashing’, where brands are claiming ethical and earth-friendly benefits under terms that are not known or regulated in any meaningful way — because they know some consumers won’t look beyond the label.

But what if your brand is genuinely clean, sustainable, eco-conscious or ethical, especially when compared to competitors? What if your products contain natural, organic ingredients that would be must-haves for your audience, but they’ve been led astray by greenwashed marketing, no longer knowing which people or products to trust? 

Three Warriors is one of those truly sustainable brands navigating the challenge. The brand’s organic self-tan products contain natural ingredients like Tasmanian marine collagen, rose oil, olive oil and aloe vera to create vegan and cruelty-free tans without the chemicals of their competitors. The brand proudly states its full ingredient list on every product page — where, in comparison, leading self-tan brands make no mention of ingredients at all. 

We spoke to Meagan Pate, CMO of Three Warriors, to learn how the brand communicates their identity and shares the benefits of their organic formula amidst the clean-beauty noise.

Building (and saying) something different 

Three Warriors was founded in 2014 when finding an alternative self-tan product became an essential undertaking for the brand’s founder. Meagan shares: “My business partner, Corbin, founded Three Warriors when he became sick with microtoxin poisoning. He loved self-tan, but when he was looking at the ingredients in what he was putting on his body — because at that point he was unable to break down toxins — he wanted to be more considerate. So he originally formulated the tanning mousse for himself.”

“At that point, no competitor brand had any skincare actives or skincare-first communication and messaging. It was very much focused on the self-tan.”

Messaging in the self-tan industry tends to lie within the realm of visual results — with talk of ‘even, bronzed tans’, ’sunkissed glow in one hour’ and ‘glowing like a day on Bondi Beach’. 

In contrast, Three Warriors leads with benefits in their messaging including ‘ethically sourced ingredients from Tasmania’ and ‘certified organic, vegan, and cruelty-free’.

“Many of our competitors focus their messaging on the top layer of skin because the active ingredient is DHA. When it oxidises with dead skin cells, that’s when you get your color. They use lots of different ingredients like synthetic DHAs, and pigments and dyes to offset that colour, because DHA is naturally very orange. Corbin thought, wow, I don’t want to use pigment or dyes on my skin. What’s something else we can use? So we found a naturally derived vegetable ingredient that counteracts that orange.”

When ‘clean’ hasn’t been defined 

Meagan explains: “Everything in Three Warriors tan is vegetable and plant-based, and it’s very much designed to nurture the skin health and nourish the skin for wellness reasons. That’s how you get stronger performance, because if the skin underneath the top layer is supple and golden and beautiful, then the top layer is going to sit much nicer. It’ll come off nicely, and you won’t get that snake-skin effect at the end of your typical tan.” 

With a genuinely organic and toxin-free product brought to market, Three Warriors had to find ways to navigate the conversation in ways their competitors were not.

“Our comms strategy is informed by the product performance, product formulation and ingredients, which we think is great. Because what is ‘clean’? It hasn’t really been defined. That’s been a challenge for us, because look at our product: it is 100% plant-based and 100% vegetable-based. We are certified organic. We’re certified toxic-free. These certifications come from independent places, so we had to shift and pivot our marketing to be considerate that we didn’t wind up in these ‘greenwashing’ conversations.” 

But when competitors grab buzzwords that Three Warriors should rightly claim — organic, clean and natural — how can the brand inform customers that their product goes above and beyond? When greenwashed brands set the bar low, how can brands deserving of those titles eloquently communicate the difference to customers? 

It’s not what you say — it’s what you can prove 

As Meagan proudly states: “It’s not what we’re saying. It’s what we’re proving.”

Where competitors may craft a communication strategy and bend the product’s technical claims to fit — for example, claiming a formula is organic when it only contains one organic ingredient, then categorising the product as ‘mindful’ or ‘clean beauty’ — Three Warriors considers these claims to be secondary to the details they freely provide. 

“Independent verifications definitely help with our communication, but it’s also about transparency. If you look at the back of the label on all of our products, you can understand the label and recognise every single ingredient that is in there.”

It’s an intriguing approach to a regulated industry: “We’ve been super considerate about ensuring you don’t need to use an app or jump online to research every ingredient — because it’s labelled in plain English. Whilst we’ve used the INCI names, we’ve also used the common names, which is something our customers love.”

INCI names, referenced by Meagan, are a list of standardised and internationally accepted names used to declare ingredients in cosmetic and personal care products. For example, where an ingredient would be colloquially called ‘aloe vera’, INCI would list it as ‘Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice’. Likewise, lavender oil would be listed as ‘Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil’. 

While INCI regulations are in place to ensure transparency in product labelling, it tends to cause confusion for customers, leading to apps and websites like ‘INCI Decoder’ stepping in to translate. Three Warriors labels include both INCI nomenclature and regular colloquial names.

“When you see those ingredients on Three Warriors products, and you see all the different independent certifications, you know our product ticks your boxes,” says Meagan.

Word of mouth and the silver bullet

There’s an unexpected benefit that has arisen among the ‘clean beauty’ movement and greenwashing phenomenon: when a product really works, customers take notice. “We wouldn’t have a brand if it weren’t for word of mouth. We started in Tassie and one person told another person, then a beauty salon picked us up, and then another beauty salon. The Three Warriors journey has been very organic in that sense.”

The word-of-mouth effect has expanded as the brand continues to grow: “There are times I go into David Jones to chat with sales reps and ask what’s happening there for the brand. Sales reps will say, oh, people just love it. They come in, buy it for their sister, buy it for their mom. Particularly the gradual tan — people rave about it. We’ve recognised that and we want to nurture that.”

These days, many customers have caught on to the greenwashing effect, becoming more distrustful of empty claims on the packaging without product performance to back it up. Three Warriors uses this effect to their advantage. Says Meagan: “Our strategy is that the product has to do what it says it’s going to do. We’ve done everything in our power to ensure that’s the case.”

“In the beauty industry, on average, it costs you $50 to acquire a customer. Generally, that means on your first sale, you lose money. The second time, if we’re lucky, we will make money. The third time, great! So if your product is not doing the heavy lifting, and your customers aren’t coming back a second or third time, and telling people about it and loving it, your brand will not be commercially viable.”

“Now that we’re past the golden era of the ecommerce boom — where Facebook was virtually printing money for brands — you need your product to be your biggest strength and silver bullet.”

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Based on an interview with Meagan Pate, CMO of Three Warriors

Written by Taryn Rapp of Lovenote