L’Oreal uses social listening, in-house teams to tap into beauty trends ‘at the speed of culture’

Brands beneath the L’Oreal umbrella are doing extra qualitative and quantitative analysis round trends as they’re occurring, defined Wen, including that, as the firm identifies the varied trends it might probably tap into, it figures out which model is best-suited to achieve this. For instance, as latest beauty trends emerged round the Y2K aesthetic, L’Oreal realized that white eyeliner was making a comeback. L’Oreal model NYX was one of the unique white eyeliner manufacturers well-liked in the early 2000s, so tapping into this explicit pattern made sense for the model, defined Wen. 

“It took days for us to realize this was something we really needed to show up for as a brand,” stated Wen. “We can show up authentically with our brand and our white eyeliner story. Within days of making that realization we had content that was produced. ‘This is how you use white eyeliner for the classic waterline look. This is how you use it for contouring for brows. This is how you use it for contouring your face.’”

Wen continued, “Within days we can track the level of engagement and directly through this product being sold out in stores and online. When we’re talking about meeting consumers where they are, this is what I mean. … Showing up effectively with the right product, content, places where consumers want to shop.”

L’Oreal uses each paid and natural approaches when creating content material round these rising beauty trends. It’s unclear precisely how a lot L’Oreal is dedicating to this effort, as the firm didn’t present specifics about advert budgets or the quantity of in-house creatives it has to make this strategy work. 

L’Oreal’s in-house teams create the content material round these trends, which helps the firm shorten the time between realizing a pattern is price tapping into and pushing out content material associated to it, per Wen, who added that conventional advertising timelines — briefing an company, the company pitching a giant thought and the following inventive cycle — would take too lengthy. 

“We shorten the cycle to a matter of days,” stated Wen. “If everyone is talking about this Y2K aesthetic right now and we show up one year later, we’ve completely missed this train. So in order for us to do that, it has to first start from a position where we’re listening and two, have that capability in-house for us to activate very, very quickly.”

And the incontrovertible fact that Gen Z customers aren’t looking for “polished, perfect or overly produced content,” famous Wen, helps L’Oreal’s manufacturers create content material and tap into trends rapidly.

The strategy is sensible to Eunice Shin, accomplice at model consultancy Prophet, who defined that “it makes sense for a company like L’Oreal to be constantly listening” as a result of “in today’s market, especially in beauty, so much is driven by trends and those trends are driven by creators.”

“The trend cycle that’s happening in today’s market is happening so fast,” stated Shin. “You have to jump on that trend at that moment. If three months later you’re building out a campaign and [consumers] are onto the next trend, you’re missing out.”

As for the present financial headwinds, Wen famous that L’Oreal doesn’t at the moment have plans to scale back spending. 

“We look at beauty as a category that has shown time and again that it’s incredibly resilient,” stated Wen. “We do not expect that to change going into this year. We’re very much bullish around our future growth. It’s business as usual. We’re planning to invest in our brands and all of our channels as we would usually.”

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