In our recent Future Skin Care Innovation broadcast, we spoke to Unilever Beauty and Wellbeing’s chief R&D officer Dr Jason Harcup about what’s coming next for the beauty industry’s most innovative category…
So – the question on everyone’s lips – what is the next big thing in skin care innovation?
Dr Jason Harcup (JH): For me, there are a few trends that are coming together now. We’ve got massive growth in AI and high levels of investment in it, so there are opportunities in skin care.
We pioneered Pond’s Skin AI Expert, which has built masses of data on different consumer skin types across our Asia markets. We launched it in Indonesia and the Philippines, and it has been massively successful there.
This has given us lots of insights into addressable targets. And what I love about that kind of background knowledge is that it can be combined with the explosion in life sciences technology. For example, you can combine the very personalised insights from AI with the very personalised nature of your microbiome.
We also did another fantastic pilot in Asia last year with our Pond’s Microbiome Analyser. This was a difficult thing to do because its takes aspects of your microbiome and then figures out what your microbiome is in the store in real time. So, while you’re doing your shopping you can also figure out your skin care needs. The level of data you’re getting is incredible; it produces a report of very customised needs in just 60 minutes.
The use of AI with tailored skin care is taking us closer and closer to personalisation. And that whole thing is just waiting to go. As I say, we’ve got masses of microbiome data collected already – 30,000 samples.
We’ve got 100 patents in that space. And I’m excited about the way sequencing and AI are coming together to enable us to give really tailored skin care outcomes.
Given this increased influence of science and technology in the skin care category, how do you approach skin care NPD at Unilever now?
JH: Skin care keeps you on your toes, as there are hundreds of thousands of products out on the market. You’ve got to be there for everything your consumers want because, again, it is so personalised. So, for me, the real competitive differentiator becomes speed. It always was about speed, but even more so now.
We have been taking that very seriously over the past few years. Around 28,000 of my colleagues at Unilever have been trained in generative AI. We’ve taken the whole end-to-end of our innovation process. From first ideation and business opportunity mapping all the way through all the wonderful stuff about mix creation and then right into the execution, maybe translation of artworks for regulatory needs in specific country markets. So that entire end-to-end highway and we’ve codified it digitally. We’ve deployed AI methodologies to it. We wrap all of this together in something we call ‘Data Lab’ inside Unilever. And that really gives us five times or ten times speed advantage.
Our materials innovation factory has seen around €100m worth of investment, which is staffed by robots 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In fact, during the pandemic, homeworkers were programming the robots from home to get them to do their experiments. We’ve come a long way since then, thankfully. And so those high-speed experimentation and data sets, collection, capabilities can be combined with the digital insights you can get to really produce incredible mixes.
Now we’re up to about 100 patents that we’ve got from that combined capability. So, it’s transforming very quickly before our eyes: that whole end-to-end process.
What do you think is going to be most important to the future skin care consumer?
JH: I think personalisation. The capacity to deliver skin care evermore personally tuned to you is becoming more in reach. I do think that that is going to be something that people are going to want to see happen.
And what I also think is going to be important to consumers is the recognition that beauty can come from within. We know diet is absolutely critical and we feel when our diet maybe hasn’t been quite what it should be.
At Unilever I’m really pleased with how we have built our wellbeing brands over the past few years. Hydration is absolutely core. For example, if you’re keen exerciser you need to make sure that you get plenty of water. We have brilliant assets with Murad and we also have Liquid I.V. which is America’s number one hydration brand.
Hydration is central to your skin functioning and being built properly – it’s why moisturisation is the fundamental skin need and that will always be important.
Now we’ve got this great hydration brand, that uses cellular transport technology to get water into your system earlier up the GI tract and accelerates it through the mixture of electrolytes. So, you’re getting that hydration need delivered from outside and from inside. And I do feel that that’s something that crosses lots of different kind of needs for consumers. There’s a very exciting future in that space too.
Do you consider this inside-out approach to be a key part of the future of skin care?
JH: Yes, I think so. As you’ve got all of the lifestyle aspects of beauty to consider, for example your exercise regime and maybe even how you handle your stress.
There’s what we put into our bodies and what we’re putting onto our bodies, and they combine to make us who we are.
Fundamental to both categories is hydration. That’s the that’s the kind of foundation for all of this. I think that can offer some differentiated benefits for sure.
Is there anything else you want to mention in terms of future skin care innovation?
JH: One thing I have found interesting over the years, which we’ve been doing more of lately is this idea of ‘face-ification’ of the body.
We have high-end cosmetic ingredients that can work on the face and deliver amazing benefits – like hyaluronic acid, glutathione, niacinamide and so on. In this space, I see a real untapped benefit to the body, too. You know, why should we just have them on our face? Sure, they’re expensive. But why can’t we democratise that across the body?
At Dove, we created serums for the body, which we’ve brought out in Brazil, Mexico and the US. These formulas are bringing relevant, high-end facial active benefits to the body skin.
Uur Vaseline Gluta-Hya body product innovation is also doing this. So, everybody knows glutathione for the antioxidant system – it’s all about cleaning up damage, while hyaluronic acid is all about precursors for collagen. We sell a lot of these products in hot climates where these needs are very acute. And we find that it’s the ‘waterburst sensory experience’ that you get from it that also adds to the overall mixture. But what I love fundamentally as a scientist is that it’s giving you 60 times the antioxidant and the clean-up ability of vitamin C, which is the gold standard.
Overall, I do think ‘face-ification’ of the of body is another key topic to watch.
