Putting a fresh face on new product development for No7

Since 1935, No7 has offered science-backed beauty and personal care products to help women look and feel their best. The brand works with multiple vendors to innovate successfully, including their own product innovation department, and they needed a systematic way to ensure that new products would appeal to their target consumers while driving growth and differentiation for the brand.

Given their robust product line and rapid pace of innovation, No7 sought an agile solution from Kantar that could easily scale up or down based on their needs and help them respond in a highly competitive, trend-driven industry. No7 selected Concept eValuate on Kantar Marketplace for an initial project covering three skincare concepts, but quickly realised the potential of agile concept screening – rapidly scaling their programme to over 150 concepts in just a few months.

Using Kantar Marketplace, No7 was able to tap into the speed and cost efficiencies offered by a market research platform while still benefitting from Kantar’s consultancy. This provided the brand with recommendations on where to proceed versus stop, and how to improve product concepts, and ultimately gave No7 confidence in future product pipeline.

The adoption of a systematic, platform-based approach allowed No7 to access past results and generate holistic learnings across projects, forming the backbone of a truly agile insights programme that drives more effective new product development. Having served the cosmetics and skincare industry for almost a century, No7 can now go to market with more confidence knowing that even their newest products will help position the brand to stand the test of time.