Ulta Beauty launched The Joy Project in September of 2023, “a long-term initiative created to help beauty enthusiasts and consumers at large find, embrace and experience joy.” Now, a year later, the brand has unveiled the Joy Council, which comprises joy advocates and experts in various wellness fields who inspire and motivate people through content created with Ulta Beauty. Among them is world-renowned well-being expert and author Deepak Chopra, MD, along with Peloton instructor Ally Love, relationship coach Jillian Turecki and Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez.
“Joy is the only measure of success,” Chopra told Drug Store News. “It is associated with gratitude, empathy, compassion and love and opens the door to well-being and abundance. I am delighted to be working with Ulta Beauty as The Joy Project is fully aligned with my life’s work. Together we can reach a critical mass of people for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world. It is the most urgent need of our times.”
“Like beauty, we believe joy should be for everyone, and people want to feel joy now more than ever,” Michelle Crossan-Matos, chief marketing officer at Ulta Beauty, added in conversation with the outlet. “The reality is many of us don’t know how or where to find it. At Ulta Beauty, we know joy is often found in the activities we love, the relationships we foster and the communities we belong to, and it’s our hope, that through the Joy Project and our newly established Joy Council, we will help people see the joy within and around them, so they can share that joy forward.”
Chopra and the Joy Council will work with Ulta to create exclusive, joy-inducing content that shoppers can find on the brand’s social media channels and website.
The Joy Council follows a year after the launch of The Joy Project, which began with a collaboration with best-selling author, motivational speaker, and award-winning podcast host Mel Robbins. Together, they created a unique training curriculum for Ulta Beauty’s 53,000 associates designed to “positively transform the way they think about themselves and ultimately empower guests to do the same,” according to the brand.
“It’s stunning that the research shows that negative self-talk is the biggest obstacle to experiencing joy, yet the majority of us don’t even realize how much we engage in it,” said Robbins at the time. “I’m proud to work with Ulta Beauty and The Joy Project to address this head on. Knowing Ulta Beauty’s associates hear this self-criticism from their guests every day, Ulta Beauty and I are giving them the tools to help their guests silence the inner critic and experience more joy.
There are so many brands and companies publicly discussing well-being, but few are activating in such a meaningful way. I’m honored to work with Ulta Beauty, creating custom trainings that will empower those associates to silence that inner critic and coach guests to do the same all with a mission to inspire a national conversation to spread more joy.”
