“Because you are worth it”, how simple and catchy to know that your existence has been admired by some brand! L’Oreal is dedicated to empowering every woman in society and providing solutions to anti-aging, skin issues, hairfall problems, etc. With the change of the seasons and generations, beauty standards keep evolving and every brand needs to cope with the customer requirements. L’Oreal has captured the essence of elegance and innovation in the industry and become a global giant. In this article, we embark you on the journey of an international brand to understand its various marketing strategies, and the challenges it faced and know how they contributed to its success. From humble beginnings to becoming a powerhouse in cosmetics, L’Oreal’s story is one of resilience, challenges, and strategic brilliance.
Humble Beginning
L’Oreal, an international beauty brand ruling the cosmetics industry is inventing new standards for female customers worldwide. It gives access to the best cosmetic products in quality, efficiency, and safety. Established in 1909, L’Oreal has become a leading brand with 68,000 employees working in 130 countries and earning revenue of €20.3 billion. It uses traditional recruitment tools to find the best talent in the market and reshapes the leadership qualities through them. In areas like logistics and finance, the brand faced a challenging situation in recruiting, senior, early-career professionals, and experts. Usually, many companies target the population looking for a job, however, L’Oreal focused on passive candidates and created its brand value in the market. To attract the best talent and build its employer brand for future candidates applicant, the company developed its online presence.
For better and faster recruitment the company used the LinkedIn platform and reached up to potential candidates. It started increasing its visibility through social ads which include offsite campaigning, link ads, and carousel ads. Moreover, the company implemented its marketing strategy on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. It took advantage of Christmas and New Year occasions and showed how the right marketing at the right time can be reflected in increasing its revenue in the last quarter of the corporate companies. By placing targeted ads, L’Oreal was able to generate clicks and sales at the same time which proves that its timing to run ads was accurate.
L’Oreal’s Social Media Marketing Strategy is focused upon :
1. Improving Customer Experience Management
According to Marc Duquesnoy, Social Media Performance Director, L’Oreal, “We had 120 tools to manage social networks and we did some streamlining to migrate to Sprinklr in every country by involving 3,000 users with 35 brands in 75 countries. Sprinklr is the foundation of our social media strategy. It is our backbone.”
Every single customer-facing department was targeted and community managers were trained to strengthen their roles. Moreover, its social media marketing strategy increased its autonomy and responsibilities.
2. A model based on listening and engaging
The ‘Listen-to-engage’ campaign was run by L’Oreal’s digital team to understand customer expectations and better serve them. The model consists of the following things:
- Monitor brand reputation and collect insights from customers to track the product marketing. Catering to this, it is important to listen to all social media channels, blogs, news, etc.
- Publishing the content on the social media accounts of the brand and building engagement with customers. Community managers find Sprinkler’s social listening capabilities interesting to trace the interesting conversations and react to them in a personalized way.
- Detecting influencers to deploy a brand ambassador program.
- Customer care across social channels
Being the only cosmetics company to earn more than one brand franchisee, L’Oreal is a France-based global cosmetics company. With a market share of 16.8 percent, it has remained the global brand across the industry.
Focus areas:
- Skin Care
- Hair Care and Colour
- Fragrance
- Colour Cosmetics
Road to Success in Cosmetics
L’Oreal started an extraordinary and legendary advertisement for hair color, “Because, you are worth it”. The advertisement was diversified into a wide range of beauty products across the USA, South Asia, the Far East, Russia, etc. The company started expanding globally by introducing Maybelline in the USA, whose tagline was, “Maybe she’s borne with it.” The brand was popular for various lipstick products and nail polishes in the USA. By adding the tagline “Urban American Chic”, the company promoted its products. L’Oreal acquired Maybelline in 1996 when the brand lost its focus and equity. It was extended to the Japanese market and captured nearly 56% of the market outside the USA. By acquiring different brands, it is collaborating with the national culture and diversifying its portfolio which is part of its long-term growth strategy. With the help of research centers in New York and Paris, L’Oreal attained 493 patents registered in the name of the company in 2001.
| Key TakeawaysL’Oreal owns 36 brands worldwide and continues to acquire famous beauty brands like Maybelline New York, a leading beauty product. Its other acquisitions and mergers include Granier, NYX Professional Makeup, CeraVe, Redken, etc.Since its establishment, L’Oreal has kept buying its competitors which are highly desirable brands, and increases the scope of its product offerings. |
Challenges and Solutions
Before becoming a global brand, L’Oreal faced severe challenges in its journey that proliferated its presence at the international level. Keeping different brands in one basket was one of the biggest issues the company faced in its early years. However, the company built its strategy to deal with it and constructed good brand management. Hitting the right target audience at the right time with the right product is the solution that the company came up with. Celebrities from different cultures were hired for advertisement and promotion. Furthermore, the company has an efficient R & D department on which the company spends at least 3% of its revenue every year.
Middle-aged and working women are the main target audience of the company and established educational centers to create awareness about its products in various countries and conducted various programs regarding hairdressers. By providing a wide range of products, the company opted for the complete makeover. L’Oreal has established long-term positioning within the minds of teen-age girls and working women. Due to its science-based products, it is the only company that is known as a scientific beauty company. L’Oreal’s strategic acquisitions have helped the company to catch a market cap of nearly $227 billion, with annual sales of $38 billion.
Customer Experience Management
L’Oreal Paris gave access to deep customer experience management based on their unique journey, regardless of the device they use. However, mobile devices lack responsive design and their complicated time-consuming management activities could be problematic. It is been claimed that customers using L’Oreal products for a long are diagnosed with cancer including hair and skin problems. CO2 emissions during its manufacturing have raised issues over the sustainability of the brand. Its efforts have been drawn out in its ‘For the Future’ program, launched in 2020 to address specific objectives, such as reducing all GHG emissions by 50 percent per product by 2030.
For more than 100 years, customers have believed in the products of the L’Oreal Group. It is fulfilling the requirements of customers for performance and quality and is committed to giving the best cosmetics products. Quality is a global commitment upheld by the entire company and all of the Group’s brands worldwide. The company guarantees packaging quality and safety with the help of its packaging and development teams. The packaging of the product is designed and approved through formula design, and the company checks its stability, compatibility, and dispensing system.
Lessons of Worth
For many decades, L’Oreal has emphasized its mission to increase its self-worth. It has dedicated its “Lessons of Worth” dedicated of the self-esteem of every woman and gives voice to celebrities from various cultures and their opinions about the beauty standards of women. Whether it is lipstick that empowers you to be the best version of yourself or a nourishing act of self-care to boost your confidence, L’Oreal is there to encourage every woman. With the help of the ‘Lessons of Worth’ campaign, the company asked every woman to embrace their character. It included various celebrities like Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Camila Cabello, Jane Fonda, etc.
From making shampoos and serums to lipsticks, L’Oreal has made a long journey, and if you are willing to build your own brand in the future, here are some lessons you should learn from it:
1. Create Opportunities
To establish your brand, rather than waiting for the best opportunity, it is always recommended to create your opportunity. Through L’Oréal Women of Color Think Tank, the company made connections with women of all ethnicities and celebrate diversity. The initiative gave a competitive edge to the company and raised its authenticity among the customers. The company took models of natural hair to promote the brand.
2. Be brave to make out-of-the-box decisions
As you know the beauty industry is growing continuously, it is important to be brave enough to come up with next-generation life-changing decisions. When your target customers are mainly women, it is important to break the stereotypes and make them feel empowered through your brand. That’s how you create truly disruptive, superior, and addictive beauty experiences for your consumers.
3. Being hungry and ambitious
At L’Oreal, employees are asked to stay creative and encouraged to be curious all the time to oppose the status quo and be never satisfied. The company has developed various serums, lotions, cleansers, creams, and face masks to deal with anti-aging and enhance brightening, shine control, hydration, etc.
