Hair Product Corp - brand architecture transformation
Context: Hair Product Corp is a top 5 global hair product manufacturer. It produces hair color, hair care, and hair styling products under 20+ brands and sub-brands, for both consumer and professional use.
Task: Hair Product Corp tasked Bain to help them transform the brand architecture of their professional hair product business — hair color, care, and styling products used in salons — to lean out the company’s brand portfolio and best position it for top-line growth
Team: 2 people focused on Brand Arch, + manager overseeing Brand Arch and other projects for the same client
Role: Associate Consultant, main driver of Primary Research work-stream. All work shown was produced as a team effort, and is not solely attributed to me.
*This page focuses on the Primary Research work-stream only, as I intend to showcase user research skills, but I was an equally significant contributor across all other analyses done in the brand architecture project
the problem;
After years of unrestricted growth and siloed communications between its many brands, Hair Product Corp had too many brands that were cannibalizing each other, driving up costs, or simply unsuccessful. Our team was tasked to review Hair Product Corp’s brands and recommend a slimmed-down portfolio that would position the go-forward brands for success.
our work plan;
Our plan to design a successful go-forward brand architecture required 3 parallel processes: analyses using internal client data, secondary research on competitive landscape, and primary research to better understand our consumers. This page focuses on the primary research work-stream, which I led.
User surveys: For primary research, we decided to create 2 consumer surveys, one focused on professional stylists, and the other focused on regular consumers who buy professional-grade hair products. The surveys would provide bottoms-up consumer insights on which brands to invest in our future portfolio.
Expert calls: In addition to consumer research, we also undertook expert calls to discuss growth, macro-trends, and success-stories with high-level executives at key competitor companies. This would provide us with top-down guidance on which brands to keep or cut.
1, survey;
Our bottoms-up primary research needed to answer questions like, “What is the user awareness and sentiment toward our brands?”, “How do users choose products, and how can we improve our usage rates?”, and “What are the salon and user demographics for the users of our products, and how can we best cater to the populations we hope to reach?”
Our task was to focus on the professional product portfolio, which comprised of hair color (bleaches and dyes), hair care (shampoos, conditioners and treatments used in salons), and hair styling (sprays, mousses, gels, etc. used in salons). These brands are different from those one would typically find at mass retailers or drug stores. We decided to survey our user base, who in this case were professional stylists, to assess their purchase criteria and attitudes toward various brands. See below for the detailed survey flow and outline.
Professional Survey stats:
~20 minutes, 75 questions
Coded with IncQuery, fielded by Dynata
Question types: Screening, Net Promotor Score loops, Up to 3 brand loops (based on brands used), Maximum Difference loop, Demographics
395 qualifying N (after quality checks)
obstacles;
We soon realized that though intended for professional use, a significant portion of Hair Product Corp’s professional product sales were to end-user consumers who purchase professional products through their hair salons, at beauty retailers like Sephora, or through off-price retailers like TJ Maxx. Based on preliminary sentiments from our professional-facing survey, we found that sales through off-price retailers were affecting the reputations of certain Hair Product Corp’s professional brands as “high-end” or “professional.”
Of the brands who’s reputations had already suffered in the eyes of professional hair stylists, some were quite profitable, so it did no make sense to cut the brands as we slimmed down the brand architecture. As an alternative, we wanted to asses the possibility of transitioning these brands to consumer-facing brands “with a professional heritage”. To assess the lay-consumer sentiment surrounding these key brands, we launched a second consumer-focused survey to tease out the answers to questions such as: “What is the reputation of Brand Y to consumers?” and “How likely are consumers to buy Brand Y if it becomes available through mass retailers like Wal-Mart or CVS?”
survey output;
Below are some key output analyses produced from the professional and consumer surveys:
Slide 1 - In our survey, we tested awareness, usage, and use cases for Beauty Co's brands among professional stylists. This showed us which brands were strong and in which use cases, and which brands had opportunities to improve usage or awareness.
Slide 2 - We tested Key Purchase Criteria (KPCs) and their relative importance for professional stylists when they decide which brands and products to buy. As shown above, KPCs vary slightly depending on the use case. While Performance and Versatility are important across use cases, we see for example, that Ease of Use trumps Value for Money in the Color category (as Ease of Use may improve clientele experience and minimize waiting) and Client Awareness/Demand is prioritized in the Retail category (well-known brands are more likely to sell at the counter, whereas most clients aren't particular about the brand of Color or At-Station-Styling products used).
Slide 3 - We also measured several of Hair Product Corp's brands (which were not clearly "Keep" or "Cut" in the portfolio) against the top KPCs, which showed that some brands consistently underperformed, contributing to more negative user experiences (see Slide 4). For brands that underperform in multiple arenas (KPCs, user experience (NPS), profitability, sales volume, etc.) Discontinuation or Divestiture should be considered.
Slide 4 - To assess user experience, we tested Net Promotor Score (NPS) across Hair Product Corp's umbrella brands. To learn more about NPS, click the image to heard over to Bain's NPS webpage.
Slide 5 - NPS also asks for reasons behind the scores given, and we created one-pagers for each brand showcasing survey responses that exemplified attitudes toward the brand.
Slide 6 - In our consumer survey, we tested top hair concerns, demographics, and channels of purchase among lay-consumers (people like you and me, not stylists) who purchase products to use at home. We also sliced this data by brand, which showed us whether we are reaching the consumers we target and whether the channels we currently use are effective.
2, expert calls;
For our top-down primary research through calls with industry experts, we needed to answer questions like, “What are the major trends in the industry right now?”, “Which customer segments, use cases, or price tiers are likely to see the most growth in the next 5 years?”, “What initiatives allowed you to lead your brand to success in [various endeavors, e.g., transition from professional to consumer focus, reaching your target consumer in post-COVID-era marketing, engendering brand loyalty from professional stylists etc.]?”
We worked with expert networks such as GLG and Alphasights to reach our target experts, and screened 50+ experts through screening questions to ensure they provided the expertise we were looking for. After interviewing the experts, we combined expert call and survey insights and pulled together case studies on how key competitor brands were able to achieve sustained growth, positive reputations, and successful transitions. See below for an example case study (the slide has been intentionally blurred.)
Slide 1 - In our Expert Calls, we had conversations with former leaders of competitor brands to better understand their strategies. We targeted execs at competitor brands relevant to the Hair Product Corp brands we were pressure testing. E.g., the competitor brands might play in a similar market segment, or been successful at a professional-to-consumer transition. These insights helped us define improvement opportunities for Hair Product Corp.
impact;
Our primary research, in conjunction with other analyses, provided pivotal insights that formed the backbone of our final recommendations to Hair Product Corp.
In our newly designed go-forward brand architecture, we significantly pared down the number of brands and product lines, working with the motto that “every brand should have a reason to be here.” Each brand and product line was assessed based on various criteria, including but not limited to: professional/consumer sentiments toward the brand, its performance in the market, the forecasts for the segment in which it plays, etc. Brands that were kept in our go-forward brand architecture recommendation were high-potential, high-profitability, or both. All other brands would be discontinued or divested.
Portfolio simplification positioned Hair Product Corp to grow with fewer, higher potential, and bigger brands. Following simplification, the number of brands was reduced 58%, mostly from a long tail of small, unprofitable product lines. Revenue is projected in grow ~$350M by 2026, an increase of more than 60%. Profit margin was increased 8%.
The project presented on this page has been significantly simplified due to non-disclosure agreements. For more information, please contact Anrui be email.