Overview
ULTA Beauty wanted to do something real with the holiday season. The idea was a pay-it-forward chain built around beauty and generosity: forty women across the country each surprised two people with a curated beauty box. Each of those recipients got to surprise two more. And so on, with the whole chain visualized live on an interactive map.
The Problem
The mechanic is simple on paper. Building the experience that powers it is not. Every person in the chain needed to understand what they received, feel the weight of passing it on, and have a clear, easy way to choose their two. The design had to hold across every link: seed gifter to recipient, recipient to her two, and so on as the chain grew.
The Solution
The flow ran in three steps: verify a gift code, enter each recipient's shipping details and a personalized message (which would print inside her actual box and could surface on the public map), then swipe through a gift carousel to choose what to send. A companion campaign site visualized the chain forming in real time on a map of the country, connecting every link with an animated trail, backed by a live counter of miles traveled and women reached, alongside a real social feed of unboxing videos and reactions from participants.
The video captured what happened when someone was chosen: the box arriving, the reaction, the moment of deciding who gets it next. That content was the campaign. The experience I built existed to make those moments possible and to keep the chain moving.
The Outcome
Over 600 women were surprised across hundreds of miles. The chain worked because the mechanic was honest: real people, real choices, real reactions.
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