For decades, beauty brands have utilized the power of clinical claims to help consumers fall in love with their products. Claims help consumers understand the benefits they deliver—and why those benefits are superior to their competition sitting next to them on the shelf. But as an industry, the method we used to gather and create those claims has long been flawed. Not only does it no longer effectively serve the beauty consumer, data gathered from these outdated approaches actively excludes people of color and ethnic skin tones, and that is simply unacceptable. Consumers are demanding the products we create be representative of all skin tones, so why shouldn’t our clinical testing be as well? To make sure your claims don’t have these glaring data gaps, follow our roadmap for building not just better claims, but best-in-class clinical claims that will really mean something to you target consumer.

How We Tested

For decades, beauty brands have relied on a common set of clinical testing protocols to create claims which were meant to ensure the best possible outcomes and most impactful data. These protocols were proven; they were easily implemented; and they helped control costs. However, we now understand that this approach, which has served as the foundation for most clinical testing, had unintended limitations: it often accounted for only lighter skin tones.

Participants typically fell between I-III on the Fitzpatrick scale and only exhibited mild to moderate signs of aging, such as crow’s feet or fine lines. The idea behind this process was to represent a portion of consumers who had just enough signs of aging to show statistically relevant results in the data. However, darker or olive skin tones were rarely included in panels. Questions that addressed the unique aging concerns of these ethnicities weren’t asked. What do these lapses mean for those claims? The ones that have served as the baseline of so many clinical results? The answer is, those claims didn’t necessarily apply to darker skin tones.

How We Must Test

For starters, all brands and labs need to take into account what is already well known about how different ethnicities age when designing trials and choosing panelists. Questions and surveys must reflect these differences and accurately probe concerns of the target consumer specifically, and not just those with paler complexions. Studies must be executed to account for and respect these differences and they need to be filled with a statistically relevant mix of consumers in order to protect the integrity of the data. Moving forward, panels may need to be hyper-targeted, or claims may need to be targeted to specific ethnic groups or skin tones rather than using a “one-test-fits-all” approach.

Clinical testing is expensive and time consuming, so it’s understandable that brands may be reluctant to balloon their testing budgets by jettisoning a protocol that has such a long history of success. However, in 2022, it’s simply not negotiable. Millennials are 40% multicultural and they are engaging on a much deeper level with their favorite brands and products than previous generations, questioning their safety and ingredients; efficacy and testing outcomes. More importantly, they are seeking brands tailored specifically to them, their skin tones, and their unique concerns. Clinical testing must rise to this demand and meet this need. Soon nearly half of the US population will belong to a non-white racial and ethnic group and beauty brands must account for this shift with an expanded commitment to diversity and inclusivity in their claims testing.¹

References:

1. Frey, William H. (2020, July 1) Brookings.com. The nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new census data. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-census-data-shows-the-nation-is-diversifying-even-faster-than-predicted/ on Sept 10, 2022

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About Ameann DeJohn
Widely acknowledged skin care and cosmetics industry expert, author, speaker and educator Ameann DeJohn has helped create and launch 750 products (and counting!) for over 100 of the industry’s most well-known brands, from startups to established veterans. An esthetician by training with over 30 years working in beauty—DeJohn’s keen insight on product trends and business intuition has helped her guide multiple brands to long-term success. Now, as the general manager and co-founder of Media Lab Science, an ALS company, she taps her deep understanding of product development, ingredients, business management, and marketing to propel Media Lab Science into the go-to clinical testing and content partner for brands to get validated, prove efficacy, and noticed in the overwhelmingly competitive beauty space.
Media Lab Science, www.medialabscience.com