Biography
Head of Science & Technology for Unilever’s Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care business groups
Sam’s teams are tasked with delivering disruptive technologies, external-facing scientific authority, insights and claims, underpinned by leading-edge scientific expertise.
What do consumers want when it comes to beauty and personal care products?
In a way, it’s the same as it’s always been. They want to feel confident. They want to feel beautiful. They want to have a good hair day.
And that feeling of being comfortable in your own skin, or projecting your best self, is a natural part of evolution. We’re social animals and how we feel about ourselves plays a huge part in social connection.
But there’s something else consumers demand now. And that’s down to the wealth of digitally enabled, always-available information that’s at everyone’s fingertips.
Consumers want to know that their beauty and personal care products really work. That they’re authentic. They will do what they claim to do. And increasingly they’ll research the science behind these products before they buy to make sure they deliver on their specific needs.
“We focus on the scientific truth”
As scientists, this evidence-based approach works for us. We focus on the scientific truth – a discovery that we know works well to bring about proven benefits or solve problems – and we explore what it means for consumers.
In today’s connected world, we’re able to use cutting-edge tech to source deeper data-driven insights about consumers, and that’s already translated into some very successful new ingredients.
AI, for example, allows us to look at very large, complex sets of data. We can learn things in days that not long ago would have taken years and years of research. One such example is our work to explore the microbiomeVaseline’s Gluta-Hya rangewell before conscious processing is possible