A Journey with Kenvue From Ground Truth to Global Innovation
Kenvue, formerly a division of Johnson & Johnson, faced a multifaceted challenge in the Canadian retail landscape. With a market dominated by three retailers and the rapid encroachment of Amazon, Canadian retailers began demanding strategic, shopper-centric insights that Kenvue was not traditionally structured to provide. Questions like “What is the future of the pharmacy?” or “How can brick-and-mortar stay competitive?” required more than scan or consumption data—they required real-time, qualitative insight into what was happening in stores across the country.
At the same time, Kenvue’s teams across category, sales, and marketing needed greater intelligence on execution, competitive claims, display compliance, and shopper experience—not only in urban centers, but across rural and mid-market Canada, where traditional data sets lacked coverage. Globally, Kenvue’s product innovation teams needed to monitor retail trends, ingredients, and packaging formats in key emerging markets to inform product pipelines.
The retailer asked us, ‘What’s the future of the pharmacy?’ and no one internally could answer that—until we had access to the retail ground truth from Storesight.
Solution
Kenvue partnered with Storesight to generate a real-time, image-powered view of retail shelves across regions and categories, unlocking unprecedented visibility into the “ground truth” of retail environments. Over a multi-year collaboration, Storesight became embedded across multiple Kenvue functions—category, brand, sales, and global innovation teams.
Specific Applications by Brand and Function:
Listerine: Using Storesight’s global image database, Kenvue discovered Listerine’s role in a diabetes-care aisle in Mexican Walmart stores—something never previously executed in Canada. This led to a dual placement strategy in Walmart Canada, placing Listerine both in oral care and the pharmacy section—an initiative that significantly increased visibility and sales performance.
Lubriderm: Similarly identified in the Mexican diabetes set, Lubriderm’s therapeutic role for patients with thinning skin was repositioned for pharmacy merchandising in Canada. The insight enabled Kenvue to reframe marketing and placement strategies in the health category.
Neutrogena: As part of Kenvue’s global skincare portfolio, Storesight was used to scout ingredient trends and competitive claims across international markets. The team used text search and AI-driven packaging analysis to explore language beyond traditional terms like “moisturize,” identifying emerging cues like “plump,” “juicy,” and “yummy” to appeal to Gen Z shoppers.
Pain Care Portfolio: With pain being a universal but culturally diverse experience, Storesight enabled cross-market comparisons—such as studying Eastern markets where pain care includes food, drink, and alternative therapies—guiding future product development aligned with immigrant communities in North America.
Platform Features Used:
Time Travel & Planogram Tracking: Proved SKU, brand, and category shifts over time—validating retailer tests and uncovering early indicators of new shelf strategies (e.g., K-beauty brands).
Text Recognition & Claim Search: Identified trends in packaging claims and language evolution, enabling brand managers to optimize product messaging.
Display Compliance Audits: Surface-level gaps were uncovered—such as missing brand assets on promotional displays—which empowered sales teams to demand better execution or avoid penalties.
Global Market Scouting: Storesight’s database was used to discover product, ingredient, and packaging innovation in markets like Mexico, South Korea, and India—informing global product design and future pipeline decisions.
Results
The partnership with Storesight transformed Kenvue’s ability to make strategic, insight-driven decisions and strengthened its relationships with retailers both locally and globally.
Retail Execution Wins: Visual evidence from Storesight helped Kenvue address display non-compliance, preventing lost sales and improving negotiations with major retailers.
New Retail Listings: Discovery of Listerine and Lubriderm in Mexico’s diabetes care section led to new listings and dual placement in Walmart Canada’s pharmacy section—an extremely rare and valuable outcome in CPG retail.
Faster Global Innovation Cycles: Global teams scouting for future skincare ingredients and packaging trends could now act more quickly and precisely based on real-world retail execution abroad.
Cross-Functional Adoption: Storesight became a shared resource across Category Management, Brand Marketing, Sales, and Consumer Insights, helping each team solve for their unique business needs—while aligning around a unified view of retail intelligence.
Strategic Retailer Partnerships: Kenvue was able to act as a retail thought leader, presenting data-backed recommendations on how retailers could evolve their in-store experience to meet modern consumer expectations.
