Alberto Culver has been the “Little Engine That Could” as it has historically been a relatively small company in a hair care industry that has Fortune 500 companies as direct competitors. As a result, Alberto Culver has recognized the need to be savvy with comparatively less resources and has seen promising in-market growth of its Nexxus and TRESemmé brands. With a vision of being the fastest-growing, most respected beauty-care company globally, Alberto Culver acknowledged the importance of embracing the voice of the consumer. As a result, Alberto Culver partnered with Communispace in May of 2007 to launch its first private online community, My Beauty Cafe. Alberto Culver was looking to infuse its core consumers in every step of the co-creation process.
Pamela Harting, Senior Director Consumer Insights, at Alberto Culver explains, “We made our initial commitment to engage in a 360 degree conversation with our consumers in 2007, through a partnership with Communispace. The investment has more than paid back and our communities have been a key strategic tool to help us keep the consumer at the heart of everything we do.”
By having a community of 400 hair care engaged consumers continuously accessible, Alberto Culver redefined their new product development process to consistently embrace their consumers in co-creation from ideation through product launch. Alberto Culver gathers a deeper understanding about their members’ lifestyle realities as well as their hair care habits and practices on a daily basis to help them develop compelling new hair care products. In addition, the member-to-member conversations in the community are mined to identify areas of particular frustrations to further assess unmet needs.
As part of the discovery work being conducted in the community, a universal truth became apparent—specifically, the reality that women struggle to feel fresh and rejuvenated on the days that they do not shampoo. Given that about half of U.S. women do not shampoo every day for a variety of reasons, this struggle is widespread. With this truth in hand, the co-creation process that led to the launch of the TRESemmé Fresh Start dry shampoo product line began. This co-creation process involved need state exploration, concept refinement, product form/assortment exploration, and packaging communication exploration, and eventually a category-invigorating product launch.
The journey
The journey to understand the emotional and rational impact of not washing their hair everyday started with exploration regarding community members’ hair care habits and practices, the workarounds that women have on days they skip shampooing, and their emotions surrounding how they look and feel when shampooing versus not shampooing. Exploration then focused on desired product benefits and assessment of existing competitive products that claimed to address some of the benefits members sought.
Based on an understanding of their expectations and hopes for a product to address their frustrations, concept refinement began and members helped optimize the product promise and stressed the importance of feeling refreshed. In addition, members were involved in identifying and prioritizing the dry shampoo forms and benefits that resonated most with them.
A select group of members took part in an in-home product trial to test three different product formulas (aerosol dry shampoo, refreshing mist, and waterless foam). Members shared their product likes and dislikes as well as details surrounding their application process. Understanding members’ usage routine and the associated results informed packaging communication/directions. Members also embarked on optimizing packaging communication including main benefit communication and graphics to best communicate the compelling emotional and functional benefits. Approaching the final stages of launch, members were involved in providing feedback on messaging.
It was important for Alberto Culver to understand members’ reactions to the final commercial concept for the TRESemmé Fresh Start dry shampoo product line. Overall, they felt the commercial fit very well with the TRESemmé brand and met their brand expectations of salon-quality, innovative products. These positive reactions helped reaffirm Alberto Culver’s final commercial concept.
“Our community members were an invaluable resource in helping us better understand the emotional and functional need gaps women face on the days they do not shampoo, notes Mary Ann McNulty, Associate Manager Global Hair Care, Alberto Culver. “These learnings guided the product development, positioning, and communication of the Fresh Start promise.”
A fresh start for Alberto Culver
By involving their consumers throughout the development process, Alberto Culver was able to confidently launch the TRESemmé Fresh Start dry shampoo product line in January 2010 and thereby helped to establish a sizeable dry shampoo category in the mass channels. TRESemmé Fresh Start has become the number one brand in the dry shampoo mass channel in both volume and value. By the end of 2010, Fresh Start achieved retail sales topping $7.7 million; and year two remains strong as TRESemmé Fresh Start is on target to exceed year one’s revenue. Furthermore, Fresh Start DRY Shampoo is the 6th bestselling SKU in the overall styling category in mass channels. (Source: IRI 26 wk $ sales, May 08, 2011.)
“We have been able to leverage our hair care beauty community on so many fronts—
from early-on identification of needs and getting deeper into the female hair care psyche, all the way through to packaging and communication optimization for initiatives going into market. Fresh Start is a great example of how we were able to listen to the consumer and use her throughout the creation and refinement process, resulting in real brand and category growth.”
– Cynthia Nelson, Senior Manager, Global Hair Care, Alberto Culver