The Rise of Ambient Care: Why Every Company is a Care Company

Faced with ongoing health, economic, and environmental crises, consumers are increasingly caring for themselves and their loved ones —?moving from the traditional to a?broad, sophisticated care ecosystem.

Consumers are looking for care everywhere — reconsidering what it looks like, where it happens, and how they allow it into their lives.

Many are eager to break from traditionally held beliefs by experimenting with new providers, locations, routines, and timelines in search of what best accommodates individual needs, moods, and values.?

1. The proliferation of niche technologies, products, and services?offer consumers access to tailored guidance to help them make the “right” decision across the care journey.
2. Following a pandemic-fueled rise in digital care, consumers continue to take control of all types of care from home.
3. A subset of consumers are opting out of high-maintenance expectations of what health and wellness look like, instead curating highly specific views of what self-care looks like to them.
4. Consumers are asserting their agency to define how, when, and in what ways they want to age, rejecting standard timelines around aging.

How Consumers are Blurring the Boundaries of Care

Democratizing Expertise

The “expert” is staging a comeback, as consumers increasingly believe that the “best” care is expert-led and science-backed. Expertise is more accessible than ever before as expert-backed products and services dominate CG&S categories. But with extensive information and widespread “expert” products,?knowing who to trust is more difficult than ever.

Brands Already Responding To This Shift:

• Rippl?aims to bridge the gap between primary care doctors, caregivers, and seniors, ensuring that consumers are listening to the right experts and not just WebMD. Its app provides 24/7 communication between caregivers and professionals in order to provide comprehensive, empathetic support and education for seniors living with dementia.
• Upkeep?is an on-demand service making it easier for users to compare prices and providers for cosmetic procedures, including Botox, filler, and body contouring. The company, which recently raised $2 million in seed funding, seeks to remove friction from the process of identifying and booking trusted providers. Similar services include at-home injectables startup Beauty Clique and Glamsquad.
• Noble Panacea, a skincare brand started by Noble Prize winner Sir Fraser Stoddart?to bring his groundbreaking encapsulation technology directly to consumers. Science-backed skincare brands are dominating the luxury market, helping to drive the prestige beauty category to $115B in annual sales. It is no surprise that in 2021, Noble Panacea grew U.S. sales by 450% year-over-year.

Relocating Care

From mental healthcare to cognitive support to preventative care to recovery, consumers expect moments of care to be embedded into the systems and products they rely on daily, from accessories to appliances to the home itself. The expectation of ambient care, combined with a holistic definition of care that goes beyond health, positions every company to become a care company — whether care is the primary purpose of the product or not.

Brands Already Responding To This Shift:

• Bbalance?is a smart bathmat that captures a combination of weight, posture, and balance data to deliver consumers a better understanding of their health in real-time. By being a bathmat, the analysis fits seamlessly into daily routines — as people are guaranteed to step on their mat daily.
• Ebo AIR?is a home security robot that rolls throughout the home to patrol and keep an eye on family members and pets, notifying a mobile app if anything seems abnormal. Using AI technology, Ebo AIR acts as a second set of eyes and ears so that the consumer can focus elsewhere.
• Sengled, a smart device company, is developing a Smart Health Monitoring Light – a connected light bulb that uses built-in radar technology to passively monitor key health data such as sleep, heart rate, and body temperature. Sengled is creating a lighting ecosystem where multiple bulbs can be used to create an ambient home health monitoring system, utilizing AI to detect the pattern disruptions that indict injury or sickness.

Redefining Self-Care

Consumers have access to more advanced wellness options than ever before, yet many find that these offerings implicitly set an “all or nothing” standard that is time and cost-prohibitive to maintain. A growing subset of consumers is unsubscribing from these “rules” of health and wellness, instead embracing an a la carte approach that leaves room for celebrating only the interventions, or imperfections, that feel right.

Brands Already Responding To This Shift:

• 4 AM Skin?offers a new take on “skinimalism,” catering to busy consumers with a limited range of products in dark, edgy packaging. Instead of promoting time-intensive beauty rituals — from early morning ”that girl” morning routines to 10-step product lineups — the brand offers unfussy skincare meant to be applied after a late night out. The nightlife-inspired brand aims to subvert traditional skincare norms and has partnered with alcohol brands, including Patron & 818 Tequila.
• Wellory?provides an “anti-diet approach” to health, wellness, and nutrition. The services specialize in offering highly personalized nutrition coaching to individuals with varying interests — such as post-partum nutrition or managing diet through illness. Based on integrative medicine, the service wants to use the power of strong, positive personal relationships, as opposed to restrictive standards, to help people meet their goals.
• Beginning in spring 2021, TikTokers and influencers turned to the viral “Hot Girl Walk” as a way to remain physically fit without needing to break a sweat. In reaction to the rigorous boutique fitness classes and weight loss-focused messaging of recent years, the ”Hot Girl Walk” frames a low-impact activity?like walking as an accessible, legitimate form of exercise and an opportunity to support mental health by practicing mindfulness and gratitude.

Rescripting Aging

Consumers are living longer, and celebrating the life stage they are at. They are navigating life's "gray areas” — from early onset menopause to age-positive beauty — with autonomy and agency. As such, they’re renegotiating how aging looks, feels, and lives — all while seeking new ways to navigate the data and decisions needed to allow them to live a full life, on their own terms.

Brands Already Responding To This Shift:

1. Modern Age’s digital platform enables current and future seniors to take control of their aging journey and better understand their aging options. Users — who may be as young as 30 —?take an initial self-assessment based on how old they feel and are provided with a set of tailored recommendations and support resources for a holistic regimen.
2. Vira Health’s app, Stella, provides support for people experiencing menopause. Offering services, including personalized behavior therapy, diet advice, and community forums, Vira seeks to rewrite the wellness industry’s anti-aging bent by addressing often-taboo issues to instill “age confidence” in users. The company has recently expanded into medical treatments with the acquisition of Alva, an online hormone-replacement therapy provider.
3. Colette, French home-sharing app, pairs college students with sublets in homes owned by seniors. The program helps students find affordable apartments, enables seniors to generate revenue in a manner that maintains their autonomy and helps them keep living in their homes, and strives to fight the epidemic of loneliness affecting seniors by fostering inter-generational friendships.

What It Means For You

Food & Beverages

Consumers will look for products that do more and do it simply. The boundaries between CPG and consumer health will blur further, as products with functional ingredients elevate foods and beverages into care offerings.

Beauty

Beauty will continue to be impacted by an a la carte mindset of selective extremity. Consumers will seek ultra personalization in the areas they find compelling and will look for simplified and easy-to-use products in the areas that they don’t.

Home & Personal Care

Integration of care into everyday, ambient surroundings will become the norm as consumers envision their homes as a space to seamlessly support a holistic approach to care that encompasses mind and body. The home will become a critical space for prevention, treatment, and recovery.

Consumer Health

Consumers will expect potency blended with accessible expertise. Consumers will seek out products that go beyond the basics and fit into a holistic, broader wellness story.

Continue the conversation with??What If!’s?thought leaders on Consumer Goods and Services?Cecily Cohen,?Daniella Gold, Sarah Kemp , Manacoro Mbaye , Shubha Ganesan , Hayley Donohue ;?designed by?Cristina Robles.