Abundance of choice and endless variety can be its own enemy: cut the noise to cut through the noise, then, can be an easy proposition.
[censored-green-s] is a household name for baby boomers and Gen X, but finds it harder to connect to Gen Z with its mysterious, high-end science concoction comms. Tasked with the mindboggling mission of creating a new line that speaks to Gen Z but stays true to the core, the team came to Yuzu to understand the culture of Gen Z skincare when it comes to tones and skin textures.
The struggle to understand and map out the category was a hint to a solution in itself: a bewildering variety of acids, all with complicated science comms and even more complicated naming, from salicylic and glycolic acids being the easy ones, formed the core of how texture and tone skincare in the U.S. is being structured right now: some have smaller molecules and penetrate deeper, others are better not combined with retinols, some are for red spots, others for brown spots－but in the end, who really wants to study a medical lexicon?
Where American texture skincare is all about the complicated acid ingredients, we took inspiration from Japanese skincare that barely mentions the ingredients: some of the most successful brands, such as POLA, don’t even talk about what’s in there. Instead, they focus on the mode of action, or the clear benefit articulated in consumer language. And what better way to visually manifest a mode of action and how acids are being activated than by showing how they change colour when reacting with oxygen and the skin? This had been a trend before in skincare, for Instagram-ability reasons, but why not connect it with activation and hence with visible efficacy? A simple, and visually very clear and convincing idea to show－not explain－in one simple moment of truth how the concoction works to change what’s there.
A reactive serum that proves its mode of action and focuses on the texture and tone benefit for any skin tone rather than emphasising the ingredient: it proved an instant hit, and has been on the bestseller pages for months and months.
