‘Treat not trend’: One skincare brand on cutting through in a crowded category

Walk into the skincare aisle and you’ll be spoilt for choice. Lots of different brands promising lots of different benefits. Go to social media, and in particular, TikTok, and seek out skincare content, and you’ll also find yourself bombarded by different advice.

Where in years gone by skincare routines might have been largely preserved for those concerned with “anti-ageing”, its appeal is now much broader thanks to heaps of innovation and new brands entering the category. Indeed, large swathes of Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha (those born in 2010 and beyond), are now engaging with the skincare category.

When skincare brand Byoma launched three years ago, it was entering a market where consumers were suffering from product overload.

“The consumer was so overwhelmed, they didn’t know where to start in the skincare aisle, and as a result, they were over-treating their skin,” the brand’s vice-president of global marketing Lesley Morton tells Marketing Week.

“The consumer was spending more and more on skincare, but they were reporting more skin issues than ever before,” she adds.

We felt the need to do something completely different and go left when everyone else went right.

Lesley Morton, Byoma

Harsh or improper use of skincare products can result in damage to a person’s skin barrier, the topmost protective layer of skin, this can result in all sorts of problems, such as redness, dryness and sensitivity.

Byoma’s “north star” is strengthening the skincare barrier, notes its director of marketing, Sarah Rios, with all its products laddering up to this aim.

In a category where consumers were potentially damaging their skin barrier because they were overwhelmed with options, Byoma saw a “clear white space” for a brand prioritising protecting the skincare barrier, while delivering efficacy, says Morton.

With skincare being a much-talked about topic on social media and among young consumers, it can be a very trend driven category.

At Byoma, the internal mantra is that skincare should be about “treat not trend”, says Morton. That was the goal behind its launch.

“We felt the need to do something completely different and go left when everyone else went right, and not follow the trend at the time, because we saw that wasn’t working,” she says.

With the brand now one of the fastest-growing in the category, it is clearly doing something right to cut through the noise around skincare to succeed with consumers.

Fun and functional

Efficacy is a key component of Byoma’s proposition, as is transparency around its ingredient lists. On its packaging, each ingredient is listed out and then “decoded”, telling consumers what it actually does, for example, whether it’s a cleanser or conditioner.

Accessible science-backed products are core to Byoma’s mission, but it also aims to combine “fun” with “functional”, says Morton.

Often, skincare products providing a lot of scientific rigour can be “clinical and homogeneous”, she says. That’s something Byoma wanted to avoid.

The brand is “seriously scientific but also creatively disruptive”, concepts that have often been “mutually exclusive” in the skincare category, says Morton. Byoma provides an option where consumers don’t have to choose, she adds.‘Like nobody else’: Why product is the key differentiator for one brand in a crowded category

This disruptive approach is even evident from the brand’s packaging. Many of the science-focused brands in the skincare aisle tend to appear in plain or white bottles. In contrast, Byoma’s products are eye-catching in their bright packaging.

Its “disruptive” approach is also demonstrated in the way it handles its comms. Last week, the brand launched its first global campaign, ‘Your Skin Barrier Needs You’, developed with creative agency Small World.

The creative behind the campaign aims to “humanise the skin barrier”, says Rios, with the ads literally featuring people pressing their face up to glass barriers. It is designed to educate consumers about skin barrier science and health, but in a way that is disruptive and creative, as opposed to just talking about science and efficacy.

There is a distinct lack of knowledge about skin barrier health among consumers, says Rios, and so the campaign’s primary objective is education. In particular, it wants to reach young consumers who may be misusing harsh products on their skin.

Skincare is one of the busiest beauty or personal care categories, it’s so important to know where you fit within that space.

Lesley Morton, Byoma

“We have a really strong Gen Z and Gen Alpha following, and so we felt a strong sense of responsibility to help those generations understand the importance of skin barrier health,” says Rios.

While teenagers of the past might have experimented with concealer or lip gloss as their first foray into the beauty segment, skincare is the way much of Gen Alpha is first entering the category.

“We’re not going to tell Gen Alpha not to use skincare, right? We don’t want to come off as patronising and say, just stop doing it. It’s how can we help them use skincare responsibly in a way that’s going to work for their skin,” Rios says.

Building a long-lasting brand

Education around skin barrier is a key goal of the new global campaign launched by Byoma – but so is solidifying the brand’s leadership in the arena.

“There are a lot of people that might know the brand because of our colourful packaging and approach to design really disrupting the skincare aisle, but I think a lot of people still don’t know that we are a skin barrier brand,” says Rios.

That positioning guides everything the brand does, and it’s what Byoma believes will help it cut through the noise and build a long-lasting brand that isn’t reliant on being “in trend”.

‘Entertain, educate, equip’: Meet the brands unexpectedly flourishing on TikTok“Skincare is one of the busiest beauty or personal care categories, it’s so important to know where you fit within that space, have your clear purpose and mission, and just stick to it,” says Morton.

Byoma is a brand that prioritises what Morton terms “community”, with its engaged and knowledgeable consumer base being used to guide its approach to innovation and how it handles social and above the line media.

“Everyone bangs on about community nowadays, but for us, we built the brand based on a community need, right? So, we listen to the community every single day, that’s who we serve, that’s who we work for, that’s who gives us the best ideas,” she says.

While TikTok in particular is a great channel for engaging with that community, Byoma doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed as just a “TikTok brand”, she says.

Through being true to its “north star”, the brand believes it is well-equipped to cut through the noise and continue growing in the future.