Future of Beauty

Challenge

We conduct self-initiated studies to understand emerging attitudes, generations, tribes or to deep dive on categories. We noticed some interesting trends in the world of beauty and wanted to understand what the future looked like for the sector. The Future of Beauty project is a Foresight-led speculative exploration which converges trend forecasting and emergent behaviour insight with scenario planning and design futures.  

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Insights

Inspired by a global network of beauty progressives, early adopters, influencers and experts, we witnessed the dawning of new beauty behaviours. All of which were being enabled, adapted and accelerated by emerging technologies.

We have a kit of Foresight tools which we use to deliver accuracy; multiple lenses through which we can view our clients’ complex business challenges to create clarity.  Some of them assist us in better understanding the market and brand opportunity, whereas others help us identify new needs and behaviours. We drew on our constantly evolving Trend Bank (currently there are over 200 live trends) which inspire us to find new directions, build creative hypotheses and identify consumer tribes and personas. We also engaged with our Progressive Network: people demonstrating signals of emerging trends, living lifestyles of tomorrow, today. This is a very powerful tool to ground our hypotheses in real behaviours and attitudes.

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Outcome

By extrapolating and transposing insights into speculative scenarios, we developed an insightful and inspiring capture of our study. We used this resource to share our knowledge and expertise at numerous global conferences and thought leadership platforms. It was also of great interest to the key global beauty brands, right through to small start-ups, looking to rock the market with innovation and new approaches.

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Our insight also provided creative fuel to our teams, who went on to devise a trio of design concepts to provoke conversations about possible and preferable futures. Identité is a personalised skincare system, adapted to meet dynamic needs and behaviours, delivered direct to consumers. Eléver is an AI-enabled skincare printer capable of replicating the latest looks in an instant. Atmosphère is a device which challenges the psychological and physiological stresses of urban living by creating a cleansing and calming beauty bubble.