L’Oréal – Changing the Face of Social Media Marketing in the Beauty Industry

The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar market and social media is becoming a beauty battleground as companies compete for their share of the pie. Companies are constantly looking for new ways to engage their customers, build brand loyalty and of course increase sales through their social media efforts. With a number of major players in the industry thriving in the social media landscape, beauty companies constantly have to come up with new and innovative ways to garner the attention of their sometimes fickle target market.

One company that has been very successful in accomplishing just that is L’Oréal. Not only has L’Oréal amassed an impressive base of followers on their social media accounts but they have also been praised for their innovative campaigns that continue to raise the bar for competitors and inspire companies in other industries as well.

“Globally, L’Oréal has an objective of building 100% love for our brands, and social media is crucial to driving engagement and affinity for the brands that sit under the broader L’Oréal group banner.” – Emma Williamson, Manager, Consumer Affairs and Social Media ANZ

The following video provides a quick look who L’Oréal is and at some of their social media successes to date.

For the purposes of this blog I am going to focus on one of L’Oréal’s most successful campaigns, in fact this campaign can be found on many online lists of best campaigns of 2015. If you took the time to watch the above video you may have noticed that awards season is a pretty big deal for the beauty industry and L’Oréal views the annual Golden Globe Awardsas the beauty industry’s version of the Super Bowl. In 2014 L’Oréal launched their #lorealparislive event where they employed a team of beauty experts and models to recreate red carpet hair and make-up looks in real time. The gifs were then posted on their newly launched Tumblr page to teach everyday women how to achieve the looks at home. The campaign was hugely successful controlling 80% of the Twitter conversation among beauty brands and garnering 21.8 million impressions. This video goes into a little more detail about that campaign specifically.

In 2015 L’Oréal seized the opportunity to up their Golden Globes game even further. They set up what they called a “shoppable social commerce center” in a studio in New York complete with famous fashion bloggers, beauty experts, models and social media team members from L’Oréal and their agency. As celebrities arrived on the red carpet the team once again began re-creating the trendsetting looks on the models and filming the transformation this time with 360 degree cameras. As with the 2014 campaign the images were turned into gifs and posted on their Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr pages. But this year L’Oréal went a step further by embedding e-commerce links into the posts to direct their followers right to the products that they needed to accomplish the look at home. In an effort to attract new followers the campaign was supported by paid Facebook advertising and promoted Tweets that would drive people to their Tumblr feed.

By embedding the e-commerce links directly into their posts L’Oréal created a truly unique and efficient campaign for their followers to engage with them. The ability to know what shade of lipstick a celebrity is wearing and be able to acquire it with just a few simple clicks represents an unprecedented opportunity for beauty consumers. In addition to the number of people that actually purchased online during the live broadcast, it undoubtedly led to a great deal of consumers jotting down the name of the products and venturing to their nearest store to pick them up.

Lessons for Others

Social media is changing the way companies market their products as it is probably the single most important marketing tool to come about since the advent of the television. Not only does social media give companies direct access to their target market it can also be very cost effective compared to other advertising mediums. L’Oréal has always been a name synonymous with beauty but its strategy and focus on social media is quickly making them a name synonymous with social media innovation as well. Staying on top of the latest trends is truly at the heart of both marketing and beauty but applies to all industries. In the following podcast Christophe Eymery, L’Oréal’s Head of Digital and Media ANZ discusses the shift in marketing strategies for the beauty industry in recent years and the need stay informed on the latest trends.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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