The Skin Care Paradigm

Pearlfisher’s strategy director poses the question: In a strict category, how do you create truly iconic—but new—design?

Written by Tess Wicksteed, Strategy Director, Pearlfisher

The level of radical creative change in the personal care sector, overall, is probably at an all-time high. And it’s change that’s being welcomed and accepted. But skin care is so governed by established codes and cues that it’s impossible to totally ignore the category conventions and produce the “new new.”

Beauty operates on a strict paradigm. Youthful beauty is best. In design terms, this means purity and purity usually means white or a shade thereof. In terms of language, it means “flawless,” “plump,” “smooth”… It’s standard issue stuff.

Many new challengers are coming on to the market—injecting color or a more left-field visual and written language. They are trying to break the rules in a new way, but most are just flirting round the edges. There are some exceptions. Stella McCartney’s fragrance and subsequent Care skin care range saw her held up as a new, modern icon with her embracing of style and substance, but the look of her new skin care range is not so vastly different from other new organics.

Even the established icons have found it a hard one to crack. Dove was praised for its focus on individuality with its ad campaign. But it only moved the boundaries of the paradigm so far. To be honest, beauty has never had much of an issue with individualism. The skin care packaging remained predominantly white. And the “real women” still all wore reassuringly uniform white underwear so the codes were still in place at some level.

Black has recently become the new white with caviar and mineral rich ingredients reflected in the color of new skin care products and packaging. But while the color has changed, the language has resolutely remained the same. It’s been the job of marketing to hype up the credentials and credibility and counter any negativity from such a novel and polar opposite look. But true recognition and reassurance can only come from experience.

Experience is telling us that breaking out of this paradigm is neither desirable or possible. Yes, challengers are potentially new icons because they bring about change to create the future, but icons are loved because of what they stand for… We need to work with, rather than against these codes. It’s not about bringing in new codes but about creating new and innovative expressions of the codes we know and love.

Tess Wicksteed is Strategy Director at Pearlfisher – [email protected] www.pearlfisher.com