Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) has appointed PepsiCo’s R&D chief René Lammers as Executive VP, Chief Research & Innovation Officer, effective 1 October.
Reporting to ELC President and CEO Stéphane de La Faverie, Lammers will help the US beauty giant speed up its consumer-focused, trend-led innovation pipeline, in particular for its prestige brands.
The appointment comes amid a business shake-up at ELC, which owns Clinique, MAC Cosmetics and Jo Malone London, as it seeks to turnaround flagging sales.
De La Faverie has made a series of heavy-weight appointments to the ELC leadership team in recent months as part of his ‘Beauty Reimagined’ strategic vision.
Brian Franz was named Chief Technology, Data and Analytics Officer in April, marking the first role at the company that combines the three “critical” functions under one leader.
In July, Nestlé executive Aude Gandon was appointed ELC’s first-ever Chief Digital & Marketing Officer to “build stronger consumer connections”.
With Lammers appointment, de La Faverie’s executive team is “now complete”, he said.
“René is an exceptional and innovative leader whose deep scientific expertise, global perspective, and passion for cutting-edge product development will be instrumental as we transform our approach to research and innovation to more fully align with our focus on consumer centricity,” said de La Faverie.
“Creating transformative innovation is integral to our strategic vision of ‘Beauty Reimagined’.
“And with René’s leadership, we are elevating our capabilities to deliver even more breakthrough new products, as well as on-trend innovation, more quickly across prestige price tiers.
“With this appointment, I am excited that my executive team is now complete and positioned to lead the company into its next chapter of growth and transformation.”
Lammers will lead ELCs research and Innovation capabilities, including product and clinical innovation, scientific affairs, regulatory strategy, and upstream technologies across the company’s brands.
He will “help advance the company’s high-touch innovation model, bringing forward disruptive technologies and new science-based platforms that elevate performance, quality, safety and sustainability,” ELC said in a company statement.
Advancing collaborations with leading global scientific and academic institutions will also be a focus for the executive.
Along with driving further external innovation with strategic partners, particularly in critical areas like biotechnology and longevity science.
Lammers joins ELC from PepsiCo, where he most recently led global research and development as Executive VP and Chief Science Officer.
Prior to that he held senior leadership positions at British beauty giant Unilever.