Augmented marketing is our future, here's why

When we look at app adoption cycles, we see that it takes less time to reach 100m users. Technology has percolated across generations and is supporting consumer experiences as they seek more individuality, self-expression, convenience, ultra-potent science, health and wellness, value sensitivity, trust, and transparency. Brands are responding with ‘Unbounded Creativity.’

For example, the Barbie movie last summer was a cinematic and marketing triumph. Starbucks is brewing personal connections with consumers using data. Coca-Cola is exploring creativity using generative AI. Refik Anadol’s Artwork ‘Unsupervised’ at MOMA brings a continuous stream of fantastic images materializing and morphing into each other, imagining a new crea-tech era.

Augmented marketing is the future of marketing

Beauty marketing has already been augmented by purpose, multi-sensorial experiences (offline, online and on-chain), and data. Now, it is being augmented by generative AI.

• Beauty marketing augmented by purpose: Our social and corporate responsibility program at group level is called ‘L’Oréal for the Future’. Our brands embrace purpose. To uphold women’s empowerment, L’Oréal Paris, the No.1 beauty brand in the world, created the Standup program on March 8, 2020, to fight against street harassment and empower women to walk freely towards their destiny. This was done in partnership with Hollaback - experts in the fight against sexual harassment.

• Beauty marketing augmented by multi-sensorial experiences: We believe that the future of beauty will be physical, digital and virtual. We are continuously reinventing beauty experiences. We are building new codes of beauty like Avatar Hair looks for our brand L’Oréal professional on Ready Player Me. We have brought Virtual makeup to Teams, as Maybelline partnered with Microsoft to bring a ‘Ready in a Click’ virtual makeup bag with 12 looks.

• Beauty marketing augmented by O+O data: With BeautyTech, we are building a new kind of relationship with consumers – one that is based on technology, data and AI. We have unequaled data when it comes to beauty. This encompasses everything from data on ingredients to the science of hair and skin, and beauty routines to invaluable consumer insights, since the creation of our company more than a century ago. We already have thousands of terabytes in our L’Oréal BeautyTech data platform, and we are leveraging this data through AI to create the beauty of the future. We are bringing to our consumers O+O services to guide (with virtual try-ons for makeup and hair color based on A/R); to diagnose (skin diagnosis based on AI and personalize recommendations, eg, La Roche Posay Spotscan or Lancome Skinscreen); to predict (moving from diagnosis to prognosis) and to coach them on beauty.

• Beauty marketing augmented by gen AI: This tech has opened a new frontier; it has the potential to enable marketers to fast-track creativity, drive efficiency, and ultimately allow for better consumer experiences. We are exploring multiple use cases in marketing across content/creativity (with a gen AI Content Lab), services, consumer care, search and platform-embedded AI products. We have just launched L’Oréal Paris Beauty Genius, a gen AI-powered personal beauty advisor available 24/7 in our consumers’ pockets. Today, many consumers have a hard time finding the right products, with 70% feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices available. So, they ask friends, search online, or watch videos to try and make sense of the sheer number of products on store shelves. This is where L’Oréal Paris Beauty Genius comes in, bringing product curation, a suite of service offerings and consumer care – all in one.

With the power of our 37 global brands, we are continuously augmenting beauty consumer journeys.

Augmented marketing needs to be founded on a strong digital core

• To augment our marketing through purpose, O+O+O experiences, data.

• Gen AI needs an existing strategic advantage, strength and maturity in many areas to be useful. For example, quality data is a prerequisite for reliable gen AI outputs.

• We need a strong digital core and a good foundation for augmented marketing.

At L’Oréal, we have been building our digital edge. We are systematically tracking our edge with clear KPIs. We are leading in beauty share of voice (23% SOV offline and online – where measured) and are No.1 in share of influence (29% globally in beauty). We are becoming more data-driven in our A&P optimization. Our proprietary ROI Tool, BETIQ, helps us focus on both short-term ROI and brand equity for the long term. We are also making good progress in digital sustainability/responsibility: through our partnership with French startup Impact+ to measure and reduce the CO2 emissions of our media campaigns.

• Our digital edge and success are reflected in multiple external awards/accolades as well as by investors/analysts community.

• In the USA Gartner Digital IQ index for personal care - half of the 10 top brands belonged to the L’Oréal group.

• At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2023, our. brand Maybelline won a Silver in gaming for social and influence.

• Maybelline’s ‘Ready in a Click’ virtual makeup partnership with Microsoft won a CES 2024 innovation award honoree in Web3 and metaverse technologies.

• Cerave became Ad Age America’s hottest brands alongside Barbie and ChatGPT due to its growth strategy based on digital and social.

• L’Oréal group was recognized as Corporate Startup Star in the 2023 worldwide Open Innovation awards (from Mind the Bridge & International Chamber of Commerce).

We have five core principles to continue to reinforce our strong digital core.

• Innovation @ the core: Seize what is starting.

• Scale @ the core: with unified strategic goals and strong operational muscle to continuously bring in new capabilities and skills while driving greater efficiency and impact.

• Simplicity 2 @ the core: By making time for what matters most.

• Beauty Tech @ the core: To help deliver beauty for each powered by tech.

• People, People, People @ the core.

And finally, with gen AI, creativity and technology will be brought closer together than ever. L’Oréal is well-placed to harness the potential of new technologies with three key pillars of innovation: science, technology and creativity. To me, the true opportunity for marketers of tomorrow will be found at the meeting ground of the right brain and the left brain to augment marketing.

Watch more from Asmita here.

The five shortlisted CMOs are L’Oréal’s Asmita Dubey, McDonald’s Morgan Flatley, Nestlé’s Aude Gandon, AB InBev’s Marcel Marcondes and Mattel’s Lisa McKnight. You can vote for one of them here. The WFA has extended the voting window exclusively for The Drum readers. That shuts at noon BST, Friday 2. So make it snappy. The winner will be crowned on February 27.

Aude Gandon, global CMO of Nestlé, shared her Marketing Manifesto earlier today: Killer creative operations mean nothing without killer creative ideas.