Wellbeing.com

What is wellbeing?

This simple yet powerful sketch captured the essence of the idea in early creative sessions and launched a transformative business for Boots the Chemist, the leading provider of health & beauty products in the UK. In early 2000, the company established a new online venture to spearhead the brand’s transition from a supplier of traditional products to a provider of products, services and experiences that enhance the overall wellbeing of individuals at all stages of life.

At this exciting moment in the infancy of the internet, as dot.coms disrupted every market with standalone ventures, enterprise businesses explored ways to disrupt their own markets with e-commerce strategies that stepped outside of their traditional structures. Boots approached Scient, a high-flying, rapidly expanding digital business consultancy, to first define the wellbeing experience, and then conceive the commercial web-based venture. Tom Ancona joined Scient to help them win and lead this project in London.

At Scient, Tom Ancona directed the customer experience team in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary group of business strategists, engineers, program managers and design agencies. This project defined the e-commerce offer for the brand, and mapped the customer experience for the new online venture. The rich content strategy included in-depth learning, access to diverse wellbeing services, brand micro sites, interactive tools and personalized wellbeing logs (known as apps today) with intelligent links to related heath and beauty and alternative products.

Wellbeing.com was launched in 2001 as a joint venture with a complementary wellbeing television network. Though this collaboration was short-lived and ahead of its’ time, wellbeing.com served as the vanguard of change at Boots, and was eventually absorbed into Boots.com as a key channel in the overall Boots wellbeing brand evolution.