Jen Whyte and Shafik Saba - Haleon

What does it take to grow brands in a category where science, regulation and consumer behaviour intersect? For Jen Whyte, Front End Innovation Insights Director, and Shafik Saba, Global Lead for Innovation Capability at Haleon, the answer lies in a careful balance: combining FMCG-style brand building with scientific rigour, while building innovation capability through a more structured and consistent way of working.

In this conversation, Jen and Shafik share how Haleon approaches brand growth, why consistency matters more than disruption, and how AI is beginning to reshape the way innovation happens.

Defining Brand Growth in a Science-Led Business

At Haleon, brand growth is grounded in a clear and disciplined framework. As Shafik succinctly puts it, penetration, sales, and equity sit at the heart of how success is measured.

Jen expands on this, highlighting that within Haleon’s internal model, the focus is on penetration, market share, and demand power as the three core levers for building superior brands.

Yet what makes Haleon distinctive is the context in which these metrics operate. Unlike traditional FMCG companies, the business spans oral care, vitamins, and over-the-counter medicines, categories shaped by clinical evidence, regulation, and professional endorsement. “The science here is incredible” Jen explains. “It plays a very prominent position, but it’s also highly regulated.”

This scientific backbone influences everything from product development to communication. Claims must be proven, products must perform, and trust is non-negotiable. At the same time, Haleon operates with a strong commercial discipline, supported by a long-standing marketing mix modelling programme and a deep focus on ROI.

Over time, the role of brand equity has grown in importance. As Shafik notes, while financial metrics have always been central, the brand equity measures have become increasingly important. The result is an approach that brings together healthcare science and regulation with FMCG-style brand building.

“The science here is incredible. It plays a very prominent position, but it’s also highly regulated.”

The Foundations of Sustained Brand Growth

When asked what separates successful brands from the rest, both Jen and Shafik emphasise the importance of a clear brand purpose, built through clarity, discipline, and consistency over time. Shafik points to Sensodyne as a standout example: a brand that has grown into a multi-billion-pound business while staying true to its original positioning. “It’s always had a very clear sense of purpose”, he explains. “What it is, what it isn’t, and how it should behave.”

This clarity enables brands to balance two critical priorities: protecting the core while expanding into adjacent opportunities.

Shafik uses the analogy of a drum kit, where the core brand is like the steady bass drum beat, while innovations and extensions beyond the core are like cymbals and the high hat, adding variations without losing the overall main rhythm and cadence.

He warns against chasing disruption for its own sake. Over 80% of innovations fail, he notes, often because they stretch too far from the core of the brand, are technically infeasible, or (even still) fail to meet a genuine consumer need; but the latter is rarer these days. Instead, success comes from aligning three elements: brand fit, technical feasibility, and real consumer demand.

The story of Sensodyne Clinical White illustrates this perfectly. An earlier attempt at a premium whitening product failed because it lacked brand alignment. A later launch worked better when the product experience, brand execution, and dentist-led communication all came together more effectively. “It’s ticking all the boxes,” Shafik says. “Brand fit, technical feasibility, against an enduring genuine need to whiten and offer sensitivity relief at the same time.”

“It’s ticking all the boxes; brand fit, technical feasibility, against an enduring genuine need to whiten and offer sensitivity relief at the same time.”

Alongside strategy, culture plays a crucial role. Frequent leadership changes can disrupt momentum, while long-term stewardship enables consistency. As Jen reflects from her previous experience, brands with stable leadership and clear direction tend to outperform. There is discipline and rigour that filters its way down to everybody else, she explains.

The Role of Front-End Innovation in Driving Growth

Innovation is not an optional extra at Haleon; it is a fundamental driver of growth. According to Shafik, it contributes roughly a third of growth, driving both brand penetration, as well as trading up through premiumisation. “Innovation is absolutely critical” he says. “It’s responsible for about a third of growth.”

At the heart of this is Haleon’s front-end innovation (FEI) approach. Rather than only working on individual projects, the FEI team also acts as a capability builder and an internal consultancy. Jen describes how the team works closely with brands to create structured, long-term pipelines. “We’re building capability within the organisation, a consistent language, a consistent way of doing things,” she explains.

These pipelines can span across years, providing a clear roadmap for future growth. While this may seem lengthy, it reflects the view that many consumer needs do not change dramatically over time; instead, companies often discover new needs or uncover underserved ones. “I don’t think consumer needs change drastically over time,” Shafik adds.

“Innovation is absolutely critical. It’s responsible for about a third of growth.”

Innovation at Haleon draws from multiple sources. Consumer insight plays a key role, particularly in identifying underserved needs. At the same time, professional expertise (such as dentists) offers a unique perspective on emerging problems that consumers may not yet recognise.

This dual lens is especially important in healthcare. As Shafik explains, consumers often know the symptom they are experiencing, but not necessarily the science or physiology that explains the underlying cause. By combining science, professional insight, and consumer understanding, Haleon can create entirely new categories, such as enamel protection with Pronamel.

AI as an Accelerator of Innovation

Few topics generate as much discussion today as artificial intelligence, and at Haleon, AI is already playing an important role in innovation workflows. For Jen, the value of AI lies in its ability to enhance and accelerate thinking. “I absolutely love it,” she says. “It just speeds our whole innovation process up.”

From generating personas to refining language and supporting ideation, AI has become a powerful tool for inspiration and efficiency. Tasks that once took days can now be completed in hours, freeing teams to focus on higher-value thinking. However, Jen is clear about its limitations. “Do not use it to replace research,” she cautions. “You use it to support or to inspire.”

Shafik builds on this, describing the shift towards agentic workflows where AI systems replicate structured processes while still allowing for human intervention. The goal is not to remove the human element, but to combine human judgment with machine capability. “You’re not taking the human out,” he explains. “There’s a human element and an AI element, and they work together throughout the process”.

“There’s a human element and an AI element, and they work together throughout the process”.

Looking ahead, the real potential lies in AI’s ability to analyse vast amounts of structured and unstructured data, uncovering patterns that humans might miss. Yet this opportunity comes with a caveat: data quality remains critical. For both Jen and Shafik, experimentation is key. Rather than waiting for perfect solutions, teams must engage with the technology, test its capabilities, and learn by doing.

Consistency Over Novelty: A Pragmatic View of Growth

Across the conversation, a clear theme emerges: growth is less about chasing the next big idea and more about executing the right ideas consistently over time.

Enduring creative platforms, such as Sensodyne’s dentist-led communication, demonstrate that long-term consistency can outperform constant reinvention. While execution evolves, the core idea remains intact. “Just as consumers start to hear about it, marketers get bored and move on,” Shafik observes, highlighting a common pitfall in brand management.

Instead, Haleon’s approach is grounded in discipline: understanding the brand’s role, investing in the right areas, and building capabilities that enable repeatable success. Innovation plays a critical role, but it is most effective when it is aligned with brand fit, technical feasibility, and real consumer needs. As Jen puts it, “you’ve got that framework to work within, and then you can be creative.”

“You’ve got that brand framework to work within, and then you can be creative.”