When Did Marketing Become the Formula?

Everyone is innovating. Strangely, everyone seems to be innovating the same thing.

I have started playing a little game.

Whenever a new skincare brand launches, I try to guess what I am going to see before I open the website.

Cream background. Beautiful serif. A clinically adjacent sans-serif font. A slightly scientific diagram. A close-up of skin with water droplets. A founder talking about how nothing on the market worked for them. A proprietary complex. A peptide. A barrier claim. Something fermented. Possibly exosomes. Definitely longevity.

The beauty industry is currently experiencing an extraordinary amount of individuality.

It just all looks remarkably similar.

This fascinates me. Not because trends are new. Every industry has trends. Fashion copies silhouettes. Interiors copy colours. Restaurants discover the same ingredient at roughly the same time.

But skincare has developed a particularly impressive ability to take a trend and rapidly convert it into something that looks like scientific inevitability.

One ingredient becomes interesting. Six months later everybody apparently discovered it independently.

One brand does well with a milky toner. Suddenly the planet is dangerously deficient in milky toners.

Barrier skincare becomes commercially successful. Now every product has apparently been repairing the barrier all along.

Longevity enters the conversation. Suddenly every moisturiser has developed an interest in cellular ageing.

Neurocosmetics arrive. Give it five minutes.

I say this, incidentally, as someone working with longevity and neurocosmetic concepts. Which is precisely why it annoys me.

Somewhere, a trend deck is being opened.

I imagine it like this. A room. A screen. Somebody from strategy clicks to slide 17.

THE FUTURE OF BEAUTY: LONGEVITY.

Everyone nods. Someone says “consumer appetite”. Someone else says “white space”. Someone writes “opportunity” in a Moleskine.

What changed? Did the research change? Did our understanding of skin suddenly transform? Did a formulation breakthrough occur?

Perhaps. Or perhaps the PowerPoint changed.

Those are not the same thing.

Formulation used to solve a problem.

Increasingly, I think products are being asked to solve a commercial problem.

We need a launch. We need content. We need something new for Q3. Retail wants innovation. The algorithm is bored. Competitor X launched one. Search volume is increasing. Our customer acquisition costs are rising. We need another reason for people to come back.

That order bothers me.

Because formulation should start with skin. What state is the skin in? What biological process are we trying to support? What is missing? What is excessive? What does this formula genuinely need?

Instead, sometimes it feels as though the formulation is the final piece of packaging.

There are now products whose main active ingredient appears to be positioning.

I know that sounds rude. I mean it.

Some products are extraordinarily good at explaining why they exist. Considerably better, sometimes, than they are at justifying why they exist.

The founder story. The ingredient story. The sourcing story. The laboratory story. The visual story. The sustainability story. The TikTok story. The morning-routine story. The “why now” story. The “why us” story.

By the time you reach the actual INCI list, you almost feel rude asking what is inside.

The bottle has become incredibly sophisticated.

Sometimes more sophisticated than what is inside it.

This is not an argument against beautiful packaging. I love beautiful packaging. I run a skincare brand. I spend an absurd amount of time thinking about glass, cartons, pumps, textures, fonts and how something feels in your hand. Beauty should be beautiful.

But I increasingly wonder whether packaging innovation has become easier to sell than formulation innovation.

Because consumers can see packaging. They can photograph it. They can unbox it. They can place it on a bathroom shelf. They can understand it in half a second.

Formulation is harder. Formulation can be boring. Formulation is compatibility, stability, delivery systems, pH, solubility, irritation potential, percentages, interactions, preservation, processing and a hundred other things nobody wants to put on Instagram.

You cannot easily make a viral reel about whether your emulsifier system was the right choice.

So instead we make the cap heavier.

More money does not automatically create better skincare.

It can create better awareness. Better distribution. Better creative. Better PR. Better sampling. Better influencer relationships. Better retail placement. Better acquisition. Better retention systems. Better packaging. Better photography. Better launch events. Better ads. Better ads. Better ads.

And then some more ads.

At a certain point, a skincare company can become extraordinarily sophisticated at selling skincare without necessarily becoming extraordinarily sophisticated at making skincare.

Those are two different competencies. The industry often talks about them as though they are the same. They aren't.

Investors do not invest because your epidermis looks promising.

They invest because growth looks promising.

Again: there is nothing inherently wrong with investment. Capital can build laboratories, fund research, hire exceptional chemists, improve manufacturing, expand testing, create jobs and help a good company become an excellent one.

But investment comes with an expectation: growth.

And growth has consequences. More customers. More markets. More launches. More categories. More revenue. More reasons to purchase.

Skin, unfortunately, remains biologically indifferent to your growth targets.

Your skin is not bored.

This might be one of the most important things I ever write.

Your skin is not bored.

It does not require entertainment.

If your cleanser works, your skin is perfectly happy for it to continue working. If your moisturiser supports your barrier, there is no biological requirement to replace it because another product launched. If your serum does what you need it to do, your skin does not care that the bottle has been sitting in your bathroom for six months and is no longer exciting.

Humans get bored. Algorithms get bored. Retailers need newness. Content teams need content. Investors need growth.

Your skin needs consistency.

Somewhere along the way, we confused those things.

Constant innovation is not always innovation.

Sometimes it is inventory. Sometimes it is content. Sometimes it is shelf space. Sometimes it is a reason to send another email. Sometimes it is because everybody else launched one.

And sometimes it is genuinely brilliant.

That distinction matters.

There are real advances in cosmetic science: genuinely clever delivery systems, better raw materials, better understanding of barrier biology and pigmentation, better approaches to inflammation, and interesting work around cellular communication, stress pathways and ageing.

I love this part of skincare. This is why I am still here.

But actual innovation becomes harder to recognise when everything is called innovative.

And then there is the percentage Olympics.

Apparently skincare has become weightlifting.

The bigger number wins. Never mind whether that concentration is necessary. Never mind whether it increases irritation. Never mind whether the complete formulation makes sense. Never mind whether the skin can tolerate it.

Just put the percentage in enormous typography on the front. Because numbers look scientific. And science sells.

This is perhaps one of beauty's cleverest tricks: turning quantitative information into qualitative proof.

A bigger number looks better. It just isn't necessarily better.

We are also running out of problems.

This is awkward for an industry that needs to keep growing.

Dryness. Acne. Pigmentation. Redness. Fine lines. Fine.

But growth requires expansion. So now perhaps your pores are problematic. Your texture is problematic. Your glow is insufficient. Your skin is tired. Your skin is stressed. Your skin is dull. Your skin is congested. Your skin is unbalanced. Your skin needs resetting. Your skin needs cycling. Your skin needs detoxifying. Your skin needs slugging. Your skin needs glass. Your skin needs cloud. Your skin needs whatever adjective we are using this quarter.

NAYA is not immune to any of this.

And I do not want to pretend otherwise.

We launch products. We need stories. We advertise. We care about design. We look at consumer behaviour. I look at trends. Of course I do.

Any founder who tells you they completely ignore the market is either lying or running a very unusual business.

The question for me is what happens next.

If I see a trend, do I ask: How quickly can NAYA launch one?

Or: Is there anything here that actually matters?

Sometimes there is. Sometimes the trend catches up with something scientifically interesting. Sometimes new language helps consumers understand an old biological concept. Sometimes a new raw material genuinely improves what is possible.

Great. Then formulate.

But if the answer is simply “Everybody else has one,” that isn't enough for me.

Maybe skincare needs less innovation.

Or perhaps it needs a stricter definition of the word.

Innovation should not mean: new colour, new bottle, new celebrity, new percentage, new trademark, new campaign, new launch.

Innovation should mean: We understand something better.

Or: We can now do something better.

That is a much harder standard. Good. It should be.

I would like beauty to become slightly more boring.

There. Another terrible marketing line.

I would like fewer launches. Fewer invented emergencies. Fewer miracle molecules. Fewer products whose primary purpose seems to be maintaining content velocity. Fewer brands trying to convince people that a functional routine has suddenly become obsolete.

And considerably more attention paid to making the products that already exist genuinely excellent.

Because perhaps the most radical thing a skincare company can do in 2026 is not launch another serum.