Outlook 2023: Health, Beauty, Wellness Company Leaders Offer Views On Year Ahead
Executive Summary
This year, top companies in the consumer health, wellness and beauty sectors are focused on meeting consumers’ changing self-care needs (at price points they can afford), integrating digital technologies, and driving sustainable innovations and business practices that are good for people and planet. Leaders from J&J, Haleon, Bayer, Coty and Beiersdorf weigh in.
In this first of three "Outlook 2023" features, HBW Insight asked top industry players about their expectations, priorities and programming for 2023. Here’s how leaders from five of the biggest names in consumer health, wellness and beauty responded to our prompt.
"2023 will be the year of..."
Mike Knowland
Consumer Health Country Division Head, UK and Ireland, Bayer
...building consumer support and reassurance.
The volatility of 2022 will remain in 2023, so the resilience of our teams and equipping them to effectively manage this is vital. With the cost-of-living crisis, consumers will continue to be squeezed and the level of uncertainty will remain. However, we see consumers becoming more comfortable with the uncertainty and managing their priorities, and we will be there to support them with great value, quality products and wider holistic services.
With an ever-increasing focus on greater self-care, we need to ensure we meet people’s needs and continue to provide access to trusted, quality healthcare products, especially for those on lower incomes.
We have dived deeper into understanding purchasing behavior by using our own proprietary and wider industry insight tools. For example, we know that consumers are moving away from wanting just the functional value. Many seek reliability and healthcare brands that will add value.
Read about how Bayer is helping consumers manage the cost-of-living crisis.
Vincent Warnery
CEO, Beiersdorf
...leveraging our scale as a global leading skin-care company with a consistent strategic approach.
We are proud of our heritage as the inventors of modern skin care for everyone. These roots and our history are a constant reminder of what we do best. Today, however, we live in a rapidly changing world, and we have to leverage new opportunities to their full potential. Therefore, in 2023 we will focus on further strengthening our position as leading skin-care innovator. We aim to bring significant innovations with real added value to the market by implementing fewer but better and bigger global product launches and campaigns. In concrete terms, this means that innovations and campaigns will in principle take place in all markets relevant to us in the future. This will be the driver of our sustainable growth in the coming years and the basis for the continuously successful implementation of our C.A.R.E.+ strategy.
Read more about Beiersdorf’s recent skin-care success, which has the firm positioned for a strong finish to fiscal 2022.
Shimei Fan
Chief Scientific Officer, Coty
...sustainable innovation.
The need for sustainable innovation has never been more urgent. With climate change rapidly intensifying, everyone—including corporations—must step up and do their part to create solutions for the future of our planet.
I’m proud Coty has made sustainability one of our six strategic pillars and central to our Purpose, Vision, and Values. We asked ourselves: What impact will Coty have on this planet? How can we minimize our environmental footprint? To address those questions, we made sustainability the ultimate driver of our innovation. Our recent innovations—including the refillable Chloé Naturelle Intense fragrances and the new Adidas shower gel range housed in recycled material bottles — are only the first steps on our journey to become a leader in sustainability. We’ll pursue this strategy relentlessly in 2023 and are excited to lead the way in better, different, and more sustainable products. It is what our customers want from us, and it is what our world needs.
Read more about Coty's sustainable innovations.
Manoj Raghunandanan
President, Global Self Care and Consumer Experience Organization (CxO), Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health
...everyday care.
The definition of health is broadening beyond just the physical. Now, more than ever, we’re examining the health of our planet, along with our mental and social well-being, to paint a more comprehensive picture of “personal health.” The COVID pandemic has taught us that we cannot just be concerned with the absence of disease; we must take small, preventative health actions every day to foster and sustain an overall healthy lifestyle. Increased digital diagnostic, digital therapeutics, and telemedicine integrations for everyday products, and more sustainable ingredients, are playing an increasingly important role in how we take care of ourselves and those we love. Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health has always been committed to helping people live healthier lives every day, and will continue to strive to deliver life-enhancing, first-to-market innovation through our portfolio of differentiated brands.
Read about J&J preparations for separating out its Consumer Health business as Kenvue.
Filippo Lanzi
President, EMEA and LATAM, Haleon
...corporate agility and consumer consciousness.
For companies, the illusion that things will return to the way they were before Covid-19 and the disruption which took place in 2022 is over. Nobody was prepared for everything that 2022 brought – war, inflation, political instability. The way we live and how we work has radically changed. As leaders we have to be aware of that and ensure our businesses are agile and flexible enough to deal with any situation.
From the consumer’s perspective, 2023 will be the year of more conscious choices. Partly, that will be driven by people’s financial constraints, but also because consumers have learned so much in the past two years about managing their own health and the importance of self-care. For Haleon, we’re supporting conscious choices by deepening our understanding of what really matters to local consumers in each of our markets.
Read about strong momentum at Haleon as it entered the fiscal 2022 fourth quarter.