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

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by Jacob Solomon Mar 24, 2023 News
L’Oreal uses social listening, in-house teams to tap into beauty trends ‘at the speed of culture’

March 24, 2023  •  4 min read  •  By Kristina Monllos

As beauty trends emerge and move quickly to figure out how its many brands can tap into them, L'oreal is doing more social listening. In-house teams are being used to speed up content production that taps into trends within days, instead of weeks or months of traditional marketing and advertising timelines.

The speed of change has changed as L'Oreal's chief digital and marketing officer said. It is going fast. Our goal is to focus on how to move at the speed of culture driven by algorithms, driven by content platforms, and changed consumption behavior.

As the company identifies the various trends it can tap into, it figures out which brand is best suited to do so. White eyeliner was making a comeback as the Y2K aesthetic emerged. The NYX brand was one of the first to use white eyeliner and it made sense for the brand to use it.

It took a long time for us to realize we needed to show up for this as a brand. It is possible for us to show up authentically with our brand and story. We had content that was produced after we realized that. This is how you apply white eyeliner. This is how you apply it to your face. It's how you use it to make your face look better.

Within days, we can track the level of engagement and see if the product is selling well in stores and online. This is what I mean when I say that meeting consumers where they are is important.

L'oreal uses both paid and organic approaches to create their content. The number of in-house creatives the company has to make this approach work is not known.

The company shortens the time between realizing a trend is worth tapping into and pushing out content related to it by creating content around it in-house.

The cycle can be shortened to a few days. If everyone talks about the Y2K aesthetic and we show up a year later, we have completely missed this train. To be able to do that, we have to first start from a position where we are listening and then have the capability in-house.

Gen Z consumers aren't looking for "polished, perfect or overly produced content"

In today's market, especially in beauty, so much is driven by trends and those trends are driven by creators, that's why it makes sense for a company like L'Oreal to be constantly listening

Shin said that the trend cycle in the market is happening quickly. At that time, you need to jump on that trend. You're missing out if you don't build out a campaign for three months.

L'Oreal doesn't have plans to reduce spending at this time.

Beauty has shown time and again that it is incredibly resilient. Going into this year, we don't think that will change. We have a lot of faith in our future growth. Business as usual. We are going to invest in our brands and channels as usual.