Scaling up with mass-market innovation versus scaling down to meet specific and more localized human needs? Which is more important?

Actually we need both – there is a place for both. But how we address and balance this is now the key issue for consumer brands.

The Challenge

Brands still need to succeed with the mass market but we are all now more accountable for the planet and for each other – and consumers expect brands to address a moral, social, political and ethical agenda.

We do have many forward-facing beauty brands and these have never shied away from using their brand design and packaging as campaign vehicles for charity, like MAC Cosmetics’ Viva Glam campaign and the MAC Aids Fund.

Or, to highlight a new moral agenda, like Llamascqua’s support of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

And, sustainability is absolutely no longer an add-on or just for the niche organics but an integral part of npd and innovation. It’s great to now see the beauty titans revolutionizing whole categories with, for example, the recent launch of Unilever’s aerosols, which include Sure, Dove, and Vaseline deodorants in the new ‘half size’ compressed format.

We are looking to brands to create significant change – and, beauty is, by anyone’s reckoning prolific when it comes to impactful innovation.

But the next challenge for our beauty brands is to meet human and consumer need on both a global and more local scale. It is not just about maximizing and marketing ‘glocal’ business and products, but finding new ways to meet specific need with the creation of ever more tailored and local brand initiatives.

How Nike Does It

If we look to another industry to exemplify, Nike is one brand perfectly executing this scaling of innovation.

Nike continues to dominate the market for running shoes and accessories worldwide, but this is balanced against the recent development of running prosthetics with the Nike Sole specifically designed for amputee athletes.

And it is this challenger and iconic mindset that consumer brands will now need to fully embrace to look at how they can make change happen on both levels.

L’Oréal’s Russian Initiative

L’Oréal is, however, one name to mention here as a frontrunner for this new approach. The cosmetics giant is this year turning its attention to satisfying the need of its local consumers in Russia by setting up an academy in Moscow to train more than 20,000 beauty professionals every year.

With Russian consumers having their own specific routines and requirements when it comes to beauty, an initiative such as this is designed to not just educate, but to evaluate and understand expectations and develop more tailored products.

Final Words of Advice

Brands need to look at ways to take this next step and address both the opportunity – and the new need – for scaling up and down when it comes to their future brand innovation.

In L’Oréal’s wake, we expect to see a stream of diverse and creative initiatives, but what will be most interesting is to see how our beauty brands meet this new need, like Nike, through brand design, as it is design that has the real potential to bring innovation to life – and to better lives.

About the Author: Sophie Maxwell is Insight Director at Pearlfisher. She can be contacted at:
[email protected] www.pearlfisher.com.