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Making natural skincare accessible to women
BOOTS - BOTANICS ORGANIC SKINCARE
Botanics, Boots' organic skincare brand has been in decline for the last 5 years. This is attributed to the lack of visibility in stores, a weak proposition that differentiates it from other natural beauty brands.
The challenge was to change to give the brand a new strategic direction and improve is reach across its digital and physical channels.
Digital business building for Botanics
Botanics develops affordable skincare products in collaboration with Kew Gardens. Its key audience
was women between the age of 25-37 in both UK and America.
While making organic skincare affordable is a key customer need, Botanics struggles to stand out amongst its competitors like Body Shop and Organics. Being cheaper than its competitors however also skews the perception of customers for it being not truly natural.
Botanics needed a new strategic positioning and approach to build a deeper relationship with its customers.
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It’s aim was to become a $120 million brand by 2020 & top 3 amongst young women in the naturals category
Botanics: a society of skincare experts
‘Applying service design to our brand proposition has been so inspiring and this will be a game changer for us.’​
Brand manager, Botanics
Botanics strategic proposition focussed on three differentiators based on customer and business needs:
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Enabling customers to make informed decisions by educating them about their skin and body
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By giving them access to a network of skincare experts and influencers
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Ensuring that organic skincare always remains affordable and accessible
GUIDING INSIGHTS
10
CITIES
Extensive ethnographic study conducted across UK and USA
60
INTERVIEWS
To validate the target demographic audience, Botanics and non-Botanics users
23
STORE VISITS
Across franchise and flagships stores globally for staff interviews and observations
Primary audience: Female
Age: 25 -35
Pre-family
Credit/debit lifestyle
Growing appreciation of natural product benefits
Emily is confident and self-assured. She remains true to herself and is comfortable expressing herself in her own quirky way.
She looks for work-life balance to maintain harmony in both body and mind, subscribing to the ‘credit/debit’ lifestyle.
Emily is more focussed on the pursuit of health and well-being and looking after herself on the inside than she is on external beauty.
There are 3 Emily’s with differing attitudes towards natural; opportunities exist to educate and convince her of the benefits of natural products for her skin.
She has a repertoire of skin, body and cosmetics brands that she buys regularly but is still open to new products and brands
She uses natural products because she has a growing appreciation of the benefits, that they contain no harsh chemicals and won’t hurt the environment
KEY USER NEEDS OF TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC
To find products that are suited for her skin.
To have evidence to ensure that the product actually works - seeing is believing.
To be able to learn and educate herself about what ‘natural’ means for her skin.
To associate with a brand that resonates with her values.
To learn from experts and influencers, especially whose opinion she respects and values.
To know in a clear and transparent manner if the brand and the product is fulfilling a certain personal need as decisions are made on functional rather than emotional basis
DELIVERED WORK
Digital transformation strategy
Taking the enterprise which did not have any Product, Design capability, and a legacy technology stack towards digital maturity.
A universal methodology
Setting a standardised (yet flexible) way to how all briefs and opportunities were approached and delivered.
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Digital product build
Total modernisation of how Digital Products and platforms were built. From Product Management to Product Design, React Native , Python and DevSecOps.
Capability led OKRs coupled with culture change
While Objective Key Results provided a quantitative way to measure performance and success, whe wider managed culture change was truly key.
Design career framework
As this was the first time a design discipline and its practitioners existed in Shell, a career pathway was needed to nurture employee value proposition and futures.
DesignOps & Design System
​Creating the Shell Design System that flexes across all lines of business. Introducing new tooling such as Figma and Miro.