Building a growth plan for a family skincare brand

The question

A family skincare brand was well established in one part of its category, and its insight and innovation team could see newer brands arriving across the rest.

Growth would mean asking parents to trust the brand with products it had not made before. The team had three questions to settle in turn: whom to serve next, what to offer them, and how far the brand could stretch.

Our approach

We began with what the company already knew, its earlier research and its own stakeholders, so the new work started where that evidence stopped.

A survey of parents mapped and sized the category, and in a prioritization session the brand’s team used it to agree where the qualitative work should look, now and further out.

That work looked at skincare from both sides, how parents use familiar products in family life and how they choose new ones in store and online, with the people chosen from groups the survey had defined.

What the team came away with

Four playbooks turned the evidence into something each part of the business could act on.

A category playbook set out the long-term strategy: whom to serve, what to offer them and how far the brand could stretch, drawn from both the survey and the qualitative work.

Three companion playbooks translated it for the teams who would carry it out, with guidance for developing products, for talking to families and for selling in store.

Each was built with the brand’s team as the work went, from the first working session to the prioritization that aimed the qualitative research, so the strategy arrived in terms the team had helped to shape.

The insight and innovation team could now plan new products, communications and retail from one view of the category and the families in it.