Kate Park
Motion Design · Brand Strategy
UNOVE · Motion Design Spec Campaign

UNOVE
goes West.

A speculative motion campaign introducing South Korea's top-rated functional haircare brand to a North American audience — through the lens of a generation raised on glossy pop culture and obsessed with their hair. As a creative partner at Dreamina AI, I created this case to show how AI-assisted motion direction can translate a brand strategy into a cinematic campaign system.

UNOVE haircare product
TypeSpec Campaign
MediumMotion / Video
ToolsDreamina AI
The Premise

UNOVE is arguably the best functional haircare brand in South Korea. Nobody in North America knows it exists.

— Kate Park, Independent Motion Designer Note: This is an independent speculative project created for portfolio purposes only. Not commissioned by, affiliated with, or endorsed by UNOVE.
01 — Brand Research

Understanding UNOVE.

Before concepting a single frame, I spent time understanding what UNOVE actually is — and why it deserves a Western audience. UNOVE has built its reputation on one thing: genuinely repairing damaged hair at a molecular level, not just coating it. Their hero product, the Deep Damage Treatment EX, uses a concentrated protein complex developed through dermatological research. It's the kind of product that turns skeptics into loyalists — if only they'd heard of it.

That gap between product efficacy and brand awareness in North America was the brief I wrote for myself. UNOVE's visual identity — deep navy packaging, soft pink typography — already reads as premium and fashion-forward. It just needs a cultural bridge to land with an American audience.

#1
Korea haircare ranking
UNOVE has maintained the top functional haircare position in Korea for 3+ consecutive years, driven by clinical results and near-cult customer loyalty.
72%
US women: damage concerns
Of American women aged 18–34 report active concern about heat, chemical, or environmental hair damage — the exact problem UNOVE is engineered to solve.
0
US-targeted campaigns
Despite strong global K-beauty momentum and superior product performance, UNOVE has run zero dedicated North American marketing campaigns to date.
02 — Audience Research

Who we're talking to.

The campaign isn't for everyone with hair. I identified a specific psychographic: North American women aged 18–28 who grew up on early-2000s pop culture, lived through the era of heat tools, box dye, and bleach — and are actively trying to undo the damage. They're already converted K-beauty skincare users. Getting them to make the leap to K-beauty haircare was the real creative challenge.

💇
The Recoverer
Ages 20–26 · Bleach damage era
She bleached her hair in high school and has been in recovery mode ever since. She knows every protein treatment on Amazon. She adopted K-beauty skincare first — it's time she discovered K-beauty haircare.
🌡️
The Heat Dependent
Ages 22–28 · Daily heat styling
Flat iron every morning. Blow dryer every night. She's using Olaplex but knows she's fighting a losing battle. If you show her something that actually works, she'll be loyal for life.
✨
The K-Beauty Convert
Ages 18–24 · Already in the ecosystem
Her 10-step skincare routine is all Korean. She trusts K-beauty for skin. She just hasn't made the leap to K-beauty for hair. UNOVE is the natural next discovery for her.
03 — Creative Strategy

The concept.

This audience doesn't respond to clinical before/after imagery. They respond to culture. The insight driving the campaign: they grew up consuming fashion, aspiration, and drama through the lens of glossy pop culture moments that felt both over-the-top and entirely sincere — the kind of early-2000s girl-group energy that defined a whole aesthetic era.

The campaign translates that cultural vocabulary into a K-beauty beauty moment. The visual language borrows from the hypersaturated confidence of Y2K fashion: bold saturated colour, expressive faces, dramatic hair, unapologetic femininity. UNOVE is the product those characters would have sworn by — the salon-grade secret weapon behind every perfect hair moment.

🎬
Creative territory
  • Y2K pop editorial aesthetic — glossy, bold, saturated and self-aware
  • Emotional arc: frustration → transformation → confidence
  • Friend-group energy — aspirational girl squad with distinct personalities
  • Nature-to-vivid-garden setting mirrors hair's damage-to-repair journey
  • UNOVE product as the hero object — prominent, beautiful, clearly focused
📱
Distribution strategy
  • TikTok and Instagram Reels — where this audience discovers beauty brands
  • Vertical 9:16 format optimized for mobile-first consumption
  • 15–30 second cuts built for algorithm-driven discovery and rewatch
  • Hook in first 2 seconds — strong visual contrast, not a logo reveal
  • CTA built on curiosity: "what IS this product?" over hard conversion
04 — The Films

Motion work.

Two films, two moments in the same emotional journey. Both were directed and produced independently using Dreamina AI for motion generation, with additional colour grading and timing refinement. Each targets a distinct beat — the damage reality that every girl in this audience knows, and the transformation that UNOVE delivers.

Film 01
Film 02
05 — Production Process

How it was made.

Producing a cinematic beauty campaign without a studio, crew, or talent budget requires a different kind of creative problem-solving. As a creative partner at Dreamina AI, I wanted to show how the tool can support a real creative-director workflow: research, concept, visual language, prompt direction, grading, and final campaign rhythm. The skill required is precision of visual language: the ability to describe exactly what you see in your head in terms a generative system can realise.

01
Research
Brand audit, audience segmentation, competitive landscape across K-beauty and prestige Western haircare. Understanding UNOVE's product science.
02
Concept
Creative territory definition, visual moodboarding, emotional arc mapping, scripting and storyboarding both films from scratch.
03
Direction
Iterative prompt engineering in Dreamina AI — directing composition, lighting, colour palette, character expression, motion, and product focus through precise language.
04
Post
Colour grading, timing refinement, typography, sound design, and final export to social platform specifications. Moodier palette for damage phase, warm vivid tones for transformation.
06 — Reflection

What I learned.

This project began with a question I couldn't stop thinking about: why isn't UNOVE everywhere in North America already? The product genuinely outperforms most of what's on Western shelves. The answer is that Korean brands default to marketing within Korean cultural contexts — brilliant at home, but requiring a deliberate bridge to reach an audience that hasn't been introduced to the brand ecosystem yet. That bridge is culture, not product specs.

Operating as a one-person creative team — strategist, director, and motion designer simultaneously — forced a clarity of thinking you only develop when there's no one else to defer to. Every decision had to be defensible on its own terms. That constraint sharpened the work considerably.

Working with Dreamina AI shifted my understanding of what creative direction actually is. The technical skill matters less than the precision of your visual imagination — the ability to describe exactly what you see and feel in language clear enough for a generative system to realise it. That's a genuinely transferable design capability, not a shortcut around craft.