There’s nothing more we love than sharing the exciting news and success stories from our WoW members. And today is one of those days! Clementine, a hypnotherapy app which aims to improve the emotional wellbeing of women all over the world, has recently announced a partnership with the UK’s leading skincare brand No7.

Clementine and No7 collaborated to create six free-to-access mind-skin rituals for women going through menopause, to help them feel more in control of their day and their skin.

These new digital rituals work in tandem with the new No7 menopause range and were designed to help menopausal women feel more comfortable in their skin and more positive about themselves.

A new, holistic approach to menopause, the rituals combine the sensory power of skincare application, via a guided facial massage, with the power of hypnotherapy. The six mind-skin rituals include:

Confidence ritual - Designed to empower you to seize the day and shine. Proven to help women feel more positive and ready to take on the day with confidence.
Clarity ritual – Designed to give you a time-out to help clear your mind and focus
Cooling ritual – Proven to help you regain a sense of control after a hot flush by helping to calm the mind and cool the skin.
Calming ritual - Designed to support you when feeling irritable/on edge
Get to Sleep ritual – Proven to help you feel calm and relaxed at the end of the day and prepare them for a better night sleep
Get back to sleep ritual – Designed to help you cool the skin when experiencing a disrupted night so you can fall back to sleep.

Clementine was founded in 2016 by our WoW member Kim Palmer. Kim came up with the idea for Clementine after going through a difficult period in her life – she lost her confidence completely and at her worst, she thought she might have to give up her career as she didn’t feel equipped to deal with the emotional roller-coaster she was experiencing. But after seeking help, Kim found that hypnotherapy made her feel calmer, more confident and better able to cope.

With the partnership with No7., Clementine is on a mission to better support women in menopause so we sat with Kim to find out all about this exciting partnership.

Kim, it’s such an exciting time for Clementine! You just announced a new partnership with No7, the leading UK skincare brand to better support women along their menopause journey. Please tell us more about this partnership and the idea behind it.

Ah yes, it’s a mega exciting time for us. We actually started working on this new partnership back in Nov 2020 when I was asked to pitch some ideas around how we could help bring a holistic and digital approach to supporting women through their menopause, with a focus on the connection between skin, stress & disrupted sleep.

I was over the moon to go and pitch to No7 as they had always been on my list of companies to partner with. I had a vision years ago about building multi-sensory therapy experiences for women. Part of this vision was to take the everyday products and services that we consume on a daily basis and to elevate these into a therapeutic ritual, one that would ultimately leave you feeling good on the inside and out. So skincare was always up there for me in terms of partnerships - because applying skincare is something that we do twice a day and at two very important times of the day for creating a healthy mindset - the morning and bed-time.

What we pitched to them was this idea of ‘mind-skin rituals’ for menopause. Where we paired our transformative hypnotherapy with the routine of applying your skincare. So that you could have a self-care moment twice a day without adding any more time to your routine. Where we elevated the routine to a ritual that you would look forward to. Where we combined facial massage too because of the benefits to the skin but also to reduce stress and help you to feel calm and grounded. And where we could tackle some of the challenges that many women face during perimenopause and menopause like lack of focus, irritability, hot flushes and disrupted sleep.

Clementine has been helping women gain more confidence, better manage stress and have a more positive mindset for years now. In your opinion, how are skincare and mental health connected? We would love to learn more about your idea of putting therapy in the DNA of skincare consumption.

I sort of touch on it above but we have a very strong belief here at Clementine that self-care and looking after your mindset should not be something else to add to your to-do list. So we are always trying to find ways to habit stack our therapy onto an existing routine so that it's easier to remember to do it and so that you can shift the existing routine into a ritual that you look forward to versus a routine that you rush through. Applying your skincare is a great example of this. Many women rush through this routine at the beginning of the day because they are thinking about the next thing. But what if you actually slowed down and were able to enjoy your skincare routine? And at the same time take better care of your skin and better care of your mind. So that’s where it started from.

Then when you think about skin health. Skin is an outer reflection of our overall inner health & wellbeing and therefore it can reflect how well you are coping with the many challenging changes of life. Then if you think about the extra challenges that many experience in menopause like disrupted sleep, hot flushes, anxiety and mood swings well it can impact our skin's health and appearance in a number of ways.

Dryness, sensitivity, redness and irritation: In events of stress, the brain releases steroid hormones like cortisol, which alerts the body to react instantly. A high level of cortisol can, however, among other things, weaken the immune system, causing an inflammatory response that disrupts the skin barrier.

Oily skin and blemishes: High level of cortisol can also fire up the activity of sebaceous glands in the skin, leading to excess oil that can clog the pores and cause congestion, a prime breeding ground for breakouts.

Premature signs of ageing: Cortisol is implicated in collagen breakdown and inhibits the skin’s ability to repair itself and form collagen and elastin.

So menopause can really be a roller coaster not only for our emotional wellbeing but also the wellbeing of our skin. And when we can cope better with our emotional wellbeing, it has an impact on our skin's health. It’s all linked.

Based on your research, what kind of support do women in menopause need? What does the perfect mind-skin ritual for menopause look like?

We were very lucky that No7 had conducted A LOT of research on the impacts of menopause on women. They actually spent 5 years developing their new menopause product range and the products were co-created with 7000 menopausal women - so it was very robust. From their research, combined with our research into the topic it became clear we could support women with the following rituals to benefit their minds and their skin:

For increasing confidence
For providing moments of calm
To help when they need to focus
For those disrupted nights
For cooling down
To help prepare for sleep

I should also add that No7 conducted a further study into the benefits of the ‘mind-skin rituals’ with menopausal women. We had some fantastic results from the study that are helpful to marketing the rituals but also helpful for us as a business as we now have more evidence to prove the effectiveness of our therapeutic approach.

And the perfect ‘mind-skin ritual’ combines a few key elements that together make them impactful;

Facial massage - The ritualistic movements used in the ritual can encourage the natural lymphatic flow. Poor lymphatic flow can be responsible for congestion and puffiness. But we also use the movements to aid the therapy so either helping you to relax and wind down or helping you to have more energy and get motivated.
The product - the product itself is part of the ritual. We think carefully about how to combine the application of the product. If the product has a distinctive scent then we would consider this as part of the ritual and even the product packaging for this range was used in the rituals as they have quite a unique set of tools like a roller ball which is great for massage.
Hypnotherapy - all sessions include hypnotherapy where we will guide through a series of positive statements or suggestive techniques to help create helpful thoughts and feelings to navigate different situations like getting to sleep after a tough day, cooling off after a hot flush, calming down when getting irritated or a super motivating session in the morning to get your day started off well.

Are mental health and menopause still taboo? Would you say that women are now more open to talking about it and asking for support and help when they need it?

I would say that they are definitely being talked about a lot more than when I first started talking about mental health and it’s the same for menopause. I think menopause is still in its very early days of breaking taboos. Yes, we have some celebs talking about it which is great. Yes, we’ve seen lots of companies start to change their support for both mental health and menopause in the workplace. But I think a lot of these are tick box exercises.

But to be honest, I don’t think we have moved to a situation where people are openly happy to ask for support when they need it. There is still a stigma attached to both topics. It takes leaders to create environments where there is 100% psychological safety to ask for help when you need it. I’m not just talking about workplaces. I’m talking about households, at schools, etc. And it will take a lot more education and stories to break the taboo and stigma and for these to be taken seriously.

Clementine's mission ‘to create a world where every woman believes she can do anything she puts her mind to’, obviously has resonance/ connections to No7 and their vision and values. And it seems clear that it’s important to partner up with companies who share similar values and missions. But I’m curious to hear how you’re approaching partnerships in Clementine? Will you partner with more strategic partners in femtech/wellness/beauty in the future?

We do share the same philosophy with No7 which was so important to us. Sharing a similar mission and values with a company is part of our criteria for who will partner with and who we won’t partner with.

And yes partnerships are a huge part of our growth strategy. We made the decision last year with the support of our investors Fortunis Capital that we would no longer pay for acquiring customers. We felt that this model was broken and there had to be a better way. So we did some deep thinking about our mission and where we could help. It became clear that whilst our mission ‘create a world where every woman can do/feel/be anything she puts her mind to’ was still true for us. The app was focused very much on individual women. But what if we could help be a source for good with the brands that women were interacting with on a daily basis? What if we could help brands support a women’s mindset and leave them feeling empowered too - whilst they consumed their product/service? And what if Clementine could become the ‘mind-powered ingredient’ to these brands? And I don’t mean the app. I’m talking about Clementine as an approach to shifting mindsets.

Sorry, that’s a very long answer to your question but yes we want to work with lots of like-minded brands where we believe we can add value to the experience for their customers. I do believe collaboration is the way forward if we really want to impact health outcomes. There is no silver bullet and we need to think more holistically about how we support better health for everyone.

You joined Haleon’s Re/Wire Health Studio in July 2022. Haleon NEXT is the strategic, commercial growth engine for Haleon Consumer Health, focused on creating and scaling net-new product, service and platform businesses across everyday health. Can you tell us more about the program and how it will help Clementine grow?

Gosh yes, we were so happy to be selected to join this year's cohort of exceptional companies. What’s brilliant about their health studio is that the help they give us really will help to move the business forward in a very strategic way. Their support comes in a few different guises:

Curriculum - this is not the traditional stuff you see on most accelerators about how to run a P&L etc. We have been focused on evolving our value proposition and our brand heart which are two hugely important parts of the business. For our team, we have loved this as we are so busy doing all the time that we very rarely take the time to step out and lift our thoughts up.
Creative project - this is a huge, huge benefit of the programme. We work with a whole team from RGA, the very exclusive agency who works with companies like McDonalds, Google, and big, big companies. And they help us to create a strategy and a proposition that will help to move our business forward.
Partnerships - And this was the part of the studio that I was most excited about. How do we partner together with either an existing or new Haleon consumer product like Panadol to achieve better health outcomes? I can’t wait to see where these conversations lead us in terms of expanding our impact.

You’re building something incredible together with your team. I was surprised to hear that there are only 5 of you in the team. I guess you heard this question a million times already, but I have to ask - How do you do it?

Blimey yes, there are 5 of us. Not all the team work full time either. I feel incredibly lucky that they are a) all super talented b) super passionate about what we do and the impact we make and because of those two things it means we all work super hard so we can crack through a hell of a lot of work.

I think being small helps too as it’s easier to communicate. We mostly do that over slack. We also try to avoid making things perfect. Perfection doesn’t exist and it’s better to get stuff out into the world with more people and they will give us feedback about whether to change stuff.

Also, we have been quite ruthless over the past year with trying to not spread ourselves too thin. We’ve had to turn down opportunities, not post as much on social media, etc. Because you just can’t do it all. This is still a work in progress as we could still cull, cull, cull.

To access your free Mind-Skin Rituals, simply download the Clementine app & sign up - no credit cards required.

Download Clementine on Google Play and AppStore.

Follow Clementine on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!

Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.

Find out more about the partnership with No7

No7 & Clementine Partner to Introduce Mind-Skin Rituals to Further Support Menopausal Women

Sign up for our newsletter!

Find us on social media!