The L’Oréal Group: Building an online community one hashtag at a time

sadamcik    February 12, 2017

A new approach to employee involvement
The L’Oréal Group developed a two prong social media strategy to engage existing employees and compete for top talent. L’Oréal is the world’s largest beauty and cosmetics firm with its head office in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Offerings include hair products, skin care, sun protection, make-up, and perfume. With increased employee engagement through social media, L’Oréal has been able to demonstrate the benefits of its corporate culture to a broader audience.

Employees as brand spokespeople
Alexander Onish – L’Oréal’s Digital Employer Branding Manager – advocates a social media strategy that gives employees a safe and official way to engage with each other and their employer online. This strategy creates a sense of community within the business in addition to fostering an attractive external view of the organization. L’Oréal’s online community engagement strategy is largely driven by two hashtags that employees use to share stories about life at the office on Instagram.

#LifeatLoreal
This hashtag was designed to promote all the events taking place within U.S. offices. It includes contests for employees to win iPads and GoPros and for the opportunity to share posts on L’Oréal’s official social channels.

#LorealCommunity
This hashtag was designed to showcase how employees interact with one another both in and out of the office. Friend + co-worker? Count me in!

Lessons for Others

According to Alexander Onish, the hashtag campaign has been largely successful with an increase of 200,000 unique impressions on Instagram. Not only are internal employees more engaged through the #LifeatLoreal and #LorealCommunity social channels, the social media strategy offers the additional benefit of attracting potential new employees. L’Oréal is leading the pack by solidify a great perception of the brand and the workplace itself.

Organization: The L’Oréal Group
Industry: beauty, cosmetics
Name of Organization Contact: Alexander Onish, Digital Employer Branding Manager

Authored by: Sylvia A

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.


References