VERIFED

Purpose. To make skincare more honest, transparent and verifiable. Skincare should be built on clear formulations, meaningful ingredients, credible testing and claims that stand up to scrutiny.

Mission. To create thoughtfully formulated skincare that does what it says it will do, starting with sun protection. Every ingredient has a clear purpose, and performance comes before marketing noise.

Vision. A skincare category where “trust me” is replaced by “check for yourself”, and trust is earned through transparency, formulation and proof.

Competitors each sell a single reason to believe. VERIFED connects them: why an ingredient is there, what role it plays in the formula, and how that feels in the product you use. The consumer-facing thought is simple: know what’s in it, and know why it’s there.

That becomes the position: a skincare-first sunscreen, where protection, skin benefits and product experience are considered together, with clear communication about what each formula is designed to do.

The core message is Proof > Claims. Five supporting messages exist to make that one claim true:

• Every ingredient earns its place.
• Built for how your skin actually lives.
• One step, several jobs.
• We’ll tell you what this isn’t for, too.
• Consistency is the real promise.

The voice is clear, honest and quietly authoritative. We also wrote down what the brand should never say, such as “clinically proven” without the evidence, or “we are completely transparent”, because transparency should be shown, not announced.

Every piece of copy faces one test: can a sceptical, ingredient-literate customer check this claim in under a minute, and does it hold up?

India’s skincare market is large and still compounding, and shoppers are moving from asking “is this a nice brand?” to “what’s in this, and can you prove it?” We turned that shift into a growth plan built on trust before spend.

We worked from two personas: Rohan, 27, a product designer in Bengaluru who wants the UV filter percentage, not a nature claim; and Ananya, 24, a consultant in Delhi-NCR who fears greasy formulas in humid weather. Every friction point on their journey got a matching promise.

Months 1 to 3: foundational trust. No paid acquisition. In-person sun-protection stations, events, community co-creation, dermatologist collaborations and search fundamentals.

Months 4 to 6: digital lift-off. Search ads, a long-tail content hub and a page that discloses full ingredient percentages. Target: 500 WhatsApp subscribers and 50 technical reviews.

Month 7 onwards: scaled engine. Meta ads built on real proof from phase one, automated WhatsApp replenishment, and a pitch to quick commerce in metro hubs.

Two ideas carry the strategy into the world: an in-person event that lets people test the product themselves, and a growth campaign that puts all the proof behind one product.

A sunscreen’s most honest test is heat, sweat, sun and hours of wear. So we planned a free morning run at Cubbon Park in Bengaluru, to turn “proof over claims” into something people can feel on their own skin. The line it sits under: “Tested outside, not just on paper.”

It’s a neighbourhood event by design. About 30 to 40 people run at 6:00 to 7:30 am, and it was designed to work on a budget of INR 15,000, with reach coming from people, not paid media. Each sachet carries a unique code and an honest limitation line, so the brand states what it isn’t for, and sales can be traced back to the event.

A growth campaign for November to March, under the hashtag #ProofOverPromises: one sunscreen, fully proven, with active percentages, wear tests, white-cast tests and dermatologist explanations. No celebrities.

We began by fixing the foundations before any money was spent: checkout, tracking and landing and proof pages. Then we kept the plan deliberately small and testable.