To celebrate the first day of spring this Thursday, Yves Rocher will become the first cosmetics company in North America to plant an interactive application on Facebook.

Users of the popular social networking site will be invited to add a ‘Beauty in Bloom’ application to their profiles, and participate in a contest to win Yves Rocher botanical beauty care and spa treatments, new wardrobes by Liz Claiborne and a year of posies from 1-800-Flowers.com.

After installing the Yves Rocher application, Facebook users will be able to create their own Beauty in Bloom badges by choosing and posting to their profile the flower, background and state-of-mind message that best fits their personality and expresses their spring mood.

The Beauty in Bloom application was conceived and developed by CloudRaker, a digital branding agency with offices in Montreal and Amsterdam. Yves Rocher was founded in France four decades ago and now has more than 1,500 beauty centres around the world.

Yves Rocher’s initiative, which will go live on Facebook on March 20, is being promoted internally through an email campaign to its client base. And while users are on the social networking site picking flowers to create their bloom badges, they will see a link to Yves Rocher’s online boutique, where they can check out which products contain, or are inspired by, the particular flower they chose.