By Sector · Skincare
Actives, claims, and what you may say where.
Clinical trends, actives and consumer science. The interesting question is never the ingredient - it is whether the claim survives the market you are selling into.
- playbooks this work reaches for
- 6
- specialists it is split across
- 4
- documents shown in full on this page
- 6
What this sector is a watch on
What the clinical evidence actually supports, and where each market's regulator draws the line on an active.
How fast the answer goes stale
A regulatory position moves by market and by ruling, not by season - and it moves without announcing itself to you.
The routine
Position decides the formulation.
Skincare is bought as a sequence, and where a product sits sets its viscosity, its compatibility and which claim is even available.
Cleanse
Sets the surface everything after it meets. Strip too hard and every later claim is fighting the barrier you just damaged
Treat
Where the active sits, and therefore where the substantiation burden sits
Hydrate
Carries the measurable claim most categories actually win on
Seal
Decides whether the layers below are still there in four hours
Protect
Regulated as its own category in most markets, with its own testing
Position decides formulation, compatibility and which claim is available. No concentrations or pH windows - those are per-product facts, and here they would read as guidance.
Where it gets specific
Three questions, and the exception each one carries.
Skincare goes wrong in the gap between what is true and what is sayable.
What the clinical evidence actually supports, how an active is regulated in each market, and which claims your competitors are making that they cannot substantiate.
The same active can be a cosmetic ingredient in one market and a regulated one in another, so a claim check is a per-market question rather than a single verdict.
Claims-safe campaign imagery and the product story, written to what the evidence carries rather than to what the category says.
Imagery is where an unsubstantiated claim usually enters a launch - a before-and-after implies an efficacy claim whether or not the copy makes one.
The substantiation dossier, the supplier code of conduct and the passport data a retailer will ask for.
The pack copy, the PDP and the paid social all restate the claim. They are drafted from one approved wording here so they cannot drift apart later.
Where the claim has to land
The same active, in six places a customer meets it.
Approved once, restated six times by six people. That is where wording drifts.
- 01On skin
- 02The product still
- 03The PDP
- 04In use
- 05The editorial
- 06The campaign
Skincare output
The documents this work produces.
Real skincare deliverables, produced end to end.
Consumer & Behaviour
PDF · page 1 of 6
Switch deliverable
What actually runs
A claim, a formulation read and a market check are three different jobs, so they go to three different specialists. One system, 103 tools and 225 playbooks behind it.
Handed to
- Beauty Expert
- Researcher
- Fashion Counsel
- Analyst
Get started
Start with a skincare question.
Ask it in plain language and get the document, the creative or the spec back - sourced, and yours to edit.