Membrane Actives

During the process of breaking cell-culture world records, a biotech company discovered just how rich one of their byproducts’ bioactive cargo was. 12 months of testing (lab and production) later, we had developed our novel cosmetic ingredient: exosome concentrate.

With a bit of desk research yourself, you too would see the peer-reviewed scientific papers showing exosomes as the remedy for seemingly every and any ailment of the skin. Fine lines and wrinkles, pigmentation, wound repair, collagen regeneration, you name it, it’s in a paper. Now having discovered a way to produce that, ethically and at mass, the emerging ingredient of regenerative aesthetics… we commercialised.

So we had a novel ingredient, but we needed to be able to pitch it, package it, and sell it… and educate in the process.

Note: We built two brands for this channel: membrane[actives] the first, exvivo the second.

In the first six months of operating membrane[actives], that excited Dutch colleague of mine had closed more revenue than other established revenue channels in the business. Could he have done it without a brand? You’ll never know. So I too like to enjoy in just a teeny tiny bit of these spoils of success.

In three days, membrane[actives] was named and built. The companies first cosmetics brand. Funky. For context, exosomes (a bioactive) travel from cell membrane to membrane preaching repair and regeneration to prompt skin renewal. Tried it myself, love it. And as our exosome origin was cell-cultured fibroblast cells, we said (and so did our tagline become) they were made for cells, by cells.

So too did our brand become cells. Pixel treatments and type as cells, a nod to our cell-culturing production platform. Macro, monotone cell photography for textures and imagery, for a product that has none. An unavoidable colour palette for a strong presence in our document suite. Packaging for the big players and the home players. And I got to help with the formulation too, pretty sweet.