Dive Brief:

• The Body Shop announced it’s working with marketing partner Urban Airship to launch a mobile wallet pass for Android and iOS that provides content updates related to the retailer’s Forever Against Animal Testing campaign, according to an Urban Airship blog post.

• Users of the mobile wallet pass would receive news about the ongoing campaign, which was launched last June, as well as updates on the number of signatures that have been collected on an anti-animal testing petition that will be submitted to the United Nations next year.

• The mobile wallet pass is a continuation of The Body Shop's Forever Against Animal Testing campaign and users can share the pass with friends as well, who will then be invited to sign the petition. It's a new use of the mobile wallet and a bold brand message that could attract more mobile customers.

Dive Insight:

In addition to supporting a great cause, this mobile wallet pass should reflect well on The Body Shop brand and help highlight what the retailer is doing on a mobile front. That will be important going forward, as this announcement follows last week’s news that a Brazilian cosmetics company acquired The Body Shop from previous owner L’Oreal for a price believed to be near $1 billion. The retailer has struggled of late as more brands and retailers have moved into the beauty market, but it sounds like its new owner has big plans for reviving the brand's overall health.

More than anything, The Body Shop's new effort is a very different and interesting use of mobile wallet passes, and should go pretty far in promoting the fact that there is more to the mobile wallet than just the ability to store credit card data. Mobile wallets can store loyalty cards, gift cards, coupons, tickets and other content that in many cases can be shared on a social media basis with friends, thereby serving as a trigger to rapidly increase engagement with a specific brand, promotion or cause.

The Body Shop is certainly counting on the latter to get more people — and perhaps future customers — to sign the Forever Against Animal Testing petition, for which the retailer has already collected more than 2.8 million signatures online and in-store. Indeed, previous studies have shown that at least for younger generations, brands that are eco-friendly and socially responsible are some of the most likely to garner brand engagement and loyalty.

Urban Airship has a lot of experience assisting major brands with mobile marketing programs, including Adidas, Alaska Airlines, The Home Depot, NBC Universal, Sky Media and Zillow, and the company has itself witnessed the power of mobile wallets pass sharing. In fact, a recent Urban Airship study of 1 million Apple Wallet coupons and loyalty cards from major retail brands found that more than three-quarters of passes installed were the result of sharing rather than being distributed through a brand’s channels.

The Body Shop is looking to harness that potential for a powerful cause, and in the process it may find itself with many more mobile followers, too.