TRENDS: FROM GRASSROOTS TO GLOBAL

FROM GRASSROOTS TO GLOBAL: How Mecca is championing change

-by Jo-Anne Hui-Miller

In the beauty industry, Mecca is known as the much-loved retail powerhouse that has curated and nurtured some of the world’s most coveted brands, then shared them with customers across Australia and New Zealand and watched them flourish in the spotlight.

But in the same way that the beauty giant works closely with brands and gives them a platform to connect with customers, it also showcases the incredible work of more than 20 not-forprofit partners through its community arm and online platform M-Power.

“As a workplace, Mecca is full of people who are creative problem solvers and deeply motivated to see other people shine, whether that means I’m going to give you that magical Mecca experience in-store, or I’m delivering the very best education experience around a particular brand. It’s a very nurturing, incredibly uplifting environment,” explains Lisa Keenan, executive director of M-Power at Mecca.

“M-Power is just a very natural extension of what Mecca has always done for its customers. It’s turning its customer-obsessive culture into a community-obsessive culture.”

M-Power supports a diverse mix of changemakers that range from grassroots to global, but they all have the same purpose – to advance gender equality, an issue very close to Mecca’s heart. This group of organisations is known as the M-Collective.

There’s teen mental health charity Flourish Girl; CAMFED, a pan-African movement that supports girls going to school; Stars Foundation, which supports Indigenous girls and women across Australia; The Man Cave, which supports mental health for boys and men – and plenty of others.

“We’ve got 8000 people working in our organisation, most of them women. And we have about five million or so customers –the vast majority of whom are women. Because of the way the world works, a good deal of those people will have encountered inequality or discrimination at some point,” says Keenan.

“If you haven’t already thought about that, that’s sobering. If your motivation in life is to help people to look, feel and be their best like we do at Mecca, then you can’t accept a world in which the structural impediments to that are so real for so many people. And if we don’t get behind changing that, then who’s going to do it?”

A CHAMPION FOR CHANGEMAKERS

In the modern retail landscape, it’s now commonplace for retail businesses to run one-off community initiatives or donate money to a charity, especially during certain times of the year, like Reconciliation Week, Mardi Gras, or International Women’s Day.

But at Mecca, supporting social causes is an integral part of the business and it’s a consistent and long-term effort. And in the same way that the retailer works hand-in-hand with its beauty brands to help them flourish, M-Power is a champion for its M-Collective members.

One of the ways that M-Power helps these non-profit partners is by providing them with untied funding, giving the not-for-profits the freedom to use that investment however they best see fit.

“We don’t say that we’re just going to give you money to open up a shelter or launch a website. We give you money over a number of years and we’re going to back your strategy and your vision,” explains Keenan.

“We don’t care whether you use the money to buy toilet roll, pay salaries or send 10 girls through school. It really is about being true collaborators and supporters.”

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH EDUCATION

Education is at the heart of everything at Mecca, whether it’s offering staff a vast range of training programs, serving customers skincare workshops through its Meccaversity platform – or eradicating gender equality through M-Power.

As each M-Collective partner is trying to solve different problems, M-Power creates customised solutions for them by pulling their resources together from across the business.

It’s one thing to give an organisation money, it’s another to help grow their skills and work in partnership with them, points out Keenan.

“One of the things that our team really loves is getting involved with our not-forprofits by using the skills that they bring to work every day,” she notes.

“We’ve had people like our creative director Marita Burke, our head of marketing Kate Blythe and our chief operating officer Anna Croft talk to these organisations about how to grow. How do you connect with your stakeholders and your customers? How do you pitch your ideas? For them, getting access to Mecca’s IP is priceless.”

Mecca has also invested in an externallyrun program called M-Power Connect, to help develop the leadership skills of its nonprofit partners over a period of three years.

Meanwhile, the M-Power website shares the stories behind each of the M-Collective’s organisations and its focus is on helping them engage and educate customers in as many ways as possible.

“Our whole website is about giving [our non-profit partners] a voice. We’ve got journalists, content creators and beautiful image consultants who are all about storytelling and bringing to life the issues that these organisations are trying to navigate, so that we can really get people engaged, inspired and involved,” says Keenan.

TRULY EXTRAORDINARY MOMENTS

For Keenan, perhaps one of the most rewarding parts of working at M-Power is collaborating with non-profit organisations and creating a bespoke strategy to help them thrive, wherever they are on their business journey.

One memorable exercise was when the Mecca team ran a make-up masterclass for some of the residents of Bridge-It in Melbourne, a charity that offers residential services for young women and non-binary people experiencing homelessness.

“These are people who’ve never had their own home and felt the security or safety of having their own family. For people to show up and deliver on their commitments is really massive for them, so we sent a whole team of makeup artists to run a beautiful beauty day for them. The residents of Bridge-It were just so blown away by their love, care and attention that they had,” Keenan recalls fondly.

Another great moment for M-Power has been working with Australians Investing in Women, which is on a mission to change the way that funding gets allocated to women-led organisations. The M-Power team has hosted a number of different events for the non-profit, bringing together a great community of people, with “that beautiful alchemy that happens with the right kind of people in a room having really powerful conversations”.

And in June this year, Mecca brought to Australia humanitarian and former First Lady of South Africa, Dame Graça Machel and hosted a special M-Power breakfast event in her honour, showcasing the work she has done for women and girls in her homeland.

“I was sitting across from Dame Graça Machel and she has so much grace, so much dignity and so much to teach us. I grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa, so it was one of the most amazing moments of my life,” says Keenan.

On a personal and professional level, Keenan describes her work with M-Power at Mecca as being “truly extraordinary”.

“It’s been so humbling to work with social impact entrepreneurs – people with such huge vision and bold ambition to do something meaningful. It’s just phenomenal to work in a place like Mecca, which is full of people who have such an unbridled optimism and positivity,” she says.

“It’s honestly been one of the greatest blessings of my life.”

Jo-Anne Hui-Miller is content and insights director at retail strategy agency, The General Store.

Contact: jo-anne.hui-miller@thegstore.com.au