Illuminating the Future of Everyday Beauty

The Challenge

Exploring, prioritizing, and illuminating potential opportunity spaces within ‘everyday beauty’ to chart a clear and viable pathway to success for a major retail giant’s owned and partner-led brands.

Our client’s owned brands already had a massive footprint, but the ‘everyday beauty’ landscape was shifting faster than ever. They needed to move beyond standard category thinking to get a rich, human understanding of people’s relationship with personal care—from their deepest beliefs and daily routines to the messy pathways of discovery and adoption. The goal was to collectively narrow in on the most actionable spaces where their private labels could establish real credibility and win.

The Approach

We embarked on a dynamic journey from discovery to activation, starting with a deep-dive “remine” of existing internal knowledge to set a solid foundation. To get close to the real lives of people, we utilized 5-day digital diaries followed by in-depth interviews with “stars” from the study. This allowed us to capture the emotional rhythms and unmet needs of diverse segments, including young adults and busy parents. After directionally sizing opportunity areas using a TAM SAM SOM framework, we facilitated a prioritization session with the cross-functional team to select the three most promising spaces. We then hit the road for in-home friendship pair ethnographies and shop-alongs, witnessing the tensions and behaviors that exist at the shelf and in the bathroom mirror.

The Impact

The project culminated in three comprehensive, highly strategic Activation Playbooks. Each provided a deep dive into the “Jobs to be Done,” the client’s unique right to win, and clear strategic principles to guide future brand or product development. We delivered a roadmap that didn’t just sit on a shelf, but provided a clear “What/So What/Now What” framework for immediate action. And we all walked away feeling a little more beautiful—inside and out.