Health and wellness has been identified as one of the most important new trends which will drive shopping behaviour in the future. Taking care of ourselves and staying healthy is just one step further from the use of beauty products.
ECR Europe Marketplace Guide Berlin, May 2008
Helen Arnmstrong

“I believe the boundaries between beauty and health are rapidly changing and moving much closer together,” says Gianni Ciserani, President Western Europe, for Proctor & Gamble. “Health was previously linked to the pharmaceutical sector but today’s consumers are much more likely to want to take control of this themselves.”
As populations are becoming greyer and pressure on health care systems grows, consumers will be expected to look after themselves more and there will be more emphasis on well-being and prevention of illnesses rather than cure.

"Our philosophy is, why hide your beauty when such a relatively simple health problem can be taken care of so easily." Gianni Ciserani, president western Europe, for Proctor & Gamble.

“For us at Proctor & Gamble it is a question of evolution and revolution. The company, traditionally associated with household products, only moved into beauty products ten years ago but already we see it has strong links with health and wellness.
“For example, we launched Envive, a product for light incontinence, as a beauty product. It has bright coloured, beautiful packaging and instead of having to be hidden on a shelf at the back of the store it can be given a prominent position.
“Our philosophy is, why hide your beauty when such a relatively simple health problem can be taken care of so easily.”
If this is helping to break a taboo about incontinence, the company is also using its Pantene range of hair products which has an established reputation for healthy beautiful hair to help women with cancers. Apparently 60% of female cancer sufferers regard hair loss as the single worst side effect of cancer treatment.
Through P&Gs Beautiful Lengths, a programme currently only available in the US, healthy women donate their hair so that it can be made into wigs for those who have lost their hair as a result of cancer.

Food supplements & diagnostics
“But let‘s not be trapped. Creating value for consumers and constantly innovating products has to be in line with consumer behaviour. And consumers are evolving all the time in terms of what they need,” he says.
“For example, many consumers are satisfied with the traditional beauty products but there is a growing trend for consumers to want to feel naturally clean -and consequently beautiful - by the use of  natural ingredients and organic products.“
In addition, consumers are moving away from considering health products as something to take when you are sick and instead are taking them to prevent illness and improve well-being.
“In this respect, we are expecting a rapid acceleration of non-prescriptive health products,” says Ciserani.
The company recently launched FibreSure in the UK, one spoonful of which when added to a glass of water provides the consumer with all the fibres required for one day. This tasteless product is marketed largely at women, running active lives, as a means to improve health and inner wellness.
Also, last autumn Proctor & Gamble teamed up with Inverness Medical Innovations to form a consumer diagnostics joint venture in Geneva called SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH.
Inverness Medical Innovations is a leading supplier of consumer pregnancy and fertility/ovulation tests and rapid point-of-care diagnostics as well as supplying a wide variety of vitamin and nutritional supplements. It is currently focusing on the application of patented technologies in consumer and professional diagnostic products, principally in the fields of cardiology, women’s health, and infectious diseases.
“They have some amazing new products in the pipeline and although this seems like a completely new move for us it is in line with our strategy of seeing health as an evolution of beauty,” says Ciserani.