How skincare brand Aeston West used Highlight for claims testing

Key success metrics:

• 3 products tested

• 8 days for data collection to results

• 100% completion rate

With any skincare brand, crafting compelling claims is important. For Aeston West, it was absolutely necessary. 

“Tangible validation was a non-negotiable for me,” said Kaitlyn Schneider, VP of Brand & Product Development for Beauty at Swim USA, Aeston West’s holding company.

Kaitlyn’s vision for this new skincare brand, Aeston West, is ambitious. “We’ve built a beautiful bottle that sits out on your counter, not stashed away in your medicine cabinet,” she explained. 

The “real core” of their brand and product development philosophy is two-part: They call it “duality by design.” “Why should you have to choose?” explains Kaitlyn. “Why do you have to be clinical or botanical? Why do you have to be aesthetic or effective?”

To help Kaitlyn and her team meet their goals, Highlight stepped in to support.

The challenge: Claims substantiation & beyond

Kaitlyn, a scientist by training, knew that her products needed more than just great ingredients and beautiful packaging; they needed tangible proof of their efficacy. As she explained, "You can't be a clinical brand without clinicals."

Aeston West had several key questions they needed to answer before launch:

• Claims Validation: Could they prove that their products delivered on their promises? They needed to show that customers would see visible, tangible results, not just "good vibes."
• Repurchase Intent: Would a customer actually spend money on the products? Friends and family would offer positive feedback, but Aeston West needed unbiased opinions from real, potential customers.
• Consumer Perception: Would a customer’s description of Aeston West products align with how the team describes their products? 
• Sensitivity & Tolerance: Although the company was conducting hard clinical sensitivity tests, they wanted to know how the average consumer who might describe their skin as sensitive would feel about the products after using them.

While many beauty and personal care brands set out to appeal to a younger consumer set, the Aeston West team saw an opportunity. “There’s this big white space in beauty–women over 60–so we wanted to talk to this customer and cater to them,” said Kaitlyn. 

The product testing solution

With the Highlight product intelligence platform, the Aeston West team was able to test all three of their products, as well as test them together as one “full routine” group to validate the claims they needed to succeed.

Vertical integration to take the pain out of physical product testing

The process was straightforward: Aeston West sent their products to Highlight, and Highlight handled the rest—from managing samples to collecting and organizing the data. This "end-to-end management" saved Kaitlyn and her team significant time and stress.

Highlight’s logistics and shipping solutions made getting products to the testers a quick and easy process. “It was really smooth to send product in,” attested Kaitlyn. “I felt like it was all managed really well.”

Highlight’s warehouse team can repackage and blind products to ensure testers are giving feedback based solely on product efficacy, not brand perception. 

Unbiased response to blinded products

“A lot of people in our circle are friends, family, and other people in the business,” said Kaitlyn. “Of course they’re going to buy it. So we needed feedback from real potential customers. We needed to hear from them: ‘I’m obsessed. I love it. I would rebuy it.’”

For the Aeston West team, it was extremely useful to test for metrics like purchase intent. “When you're describing [the product], you can say you like everything, and then still say, ‘But I wouldn't spend money on it,’ so that was important to hear,” said Kaitlyn.

Reaching niche consumer groups

The Aeston West team knew that customers with sensitive skin would be an important consumer group to please. “About 80% of clients claim that they have sensitive skin,” explained Kaitlyn. But the challenge is that there’s not a clear definition for sensitive skin. Some may have a clinical diagnosis like eczema or rosacea, while others may itch or sunburn easily.

With product testers recruited from Highlight’s pre-vetted community, the Aeston West team was able to hear how sensitive users were reacting. 

To join the Highlight community of testers, all applicants must answer 43 questions related to their demographic information and behavioral habits. For skincare alone, product testers answer questions related to their regular personal care product usage, where they purchase those products, their skin type, their acne-proneness, skin sensitivity, and where they fall on the Fitzpatrick scale, so Highlight customers can build custom audiences of product testers based on these parameters.

Video testimonials for validation & powerful marketing assets

Many customers in the R&D and Consumer Insights space come to Highlight with specific quantitative surveys in mind–then they learn about the option to request video responses or even schedule in-depth interviews with respondents. 

“I sort of undervalued how critical [video] would become to our entire marketing strategy and launch plan,” said Kaitlyn. “It was also just peace of mind to hear such positive responses when they didn’t even know our brand name or have the packaging.” 

Even better, hearing the product testers describe their product experience in their own words validated many of the same language choices the Aeston West team was crafting for marketing purposes. “Many of the testers used certain descriptive words or phrases I had written in my brief, unprompted, almost word for word back to me. And it was honest feedback from real people,” said Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn mentioned how crucial these video testimonials are in planning for initiatives like their influencer marketing strategy. “The future of influencers are truly real people that were not paid to say anything, who are just really loving [the product],” said Kaitlyn. “So the fact that we can use these on social is great.”

Transparency throughout the project 

With other consumer research and product testing solutions, Kaitlyn had encountered some challenges. “Sometimes, unfortunately, you send your life savings in samples into a black hole, and you don't receive any confirmation that anybody has received them, or that they didn't explode and leak everywhere, or that they're not rotting in a warehouse. You hear nothing, and you don't get confirmation that the project started.”

With Highlight, luckily, the process was different. “The platform was so accessible,” said Kaitlyn. It was so nice to see everything happening and to have that visibility throughout the process. I didn’t have to follow up on every step, which was a major time saver.”

Speed to insights 

Highlight’s automated analytics upon project completion put insights into the Aeston West’s teams’ hands immediately once their project wrapped. “With other solutions,” said Kaitlyn of her past experiences, “your test period may be one month, but then they spend another two to four weeks putting the report together. So you’re sitting on pins and needles until you get the report, and then when you do get the report, it's typically the lab style report where you have to interpret the data yourself.” 

Kate appreciated the real-time access to the data, which was a welcome change from traditional methods. Highlight’s user-friendly platform with its easy-to-read graphs and color-coded results, allowed her to "see everything happening" and even "reach out halfway through the survey." She loved the feeling of "jumping in and refreshing to see who else has replied and what new responses have come in."

The Highlight platform provides access to your live data as soon as respondents start submitting their surveys.

Wherever there were questions, the Highlight team was available to support. “Everybody at Highlight was really great to work with. So my only feedback from a people perspective is that I’m excited to work with everyone again,” said Kaitlyn. “Everyone's super responsive, both by email, and was always happy to jump on a phone call.”

Next steps for Aeston West

With claims validated and marketing support boosted with real consumer video responses, Aeston West is set for success. 

Stay tuned for their initial digital launch by following the brand on Instagram at @aestonwest. They’ll be reaching out to their existing database of consumers with free samples and an insert card that boasts the claims they’ve now validated. “Anything quantitative and numerical gives the real validation that I can literally put into the consumers hands and make the difference between purchasing or not,” said Kaitlyn.

Long-term, real consumer data will be crucial for retailer sell-in as well. “They want to see results,” said Kaitlyn, “so to have legitimate potential customers review and provide unbiased opinions on our products will help us cut through the noise.”

Looking ahead, Kaitlyn plans to conduct "many additional studies" with Highlight, leveraging the platform's speed, transparency, and high-quality consumer feedback to support future product launches and continued brand growth.

Follow along to experience Aeston West products for yourself at their website or Instagram.