Augmented marketing is our future, here's why

If you look at the app adoption cycle, you'll see faster time to reach 100 million users. Technology is pervasive across generations, supporting consumer experiences that demand more individuality, self-expression, convenience, super-powerful science, health and wellness, value sensitivity, trust, and transparency. Brands are responding with “unlimited creativity.”

Last summer's Barbie movie, for example, was a cinematic and marketing triumph. Starbucks uses data to build personal connections with consumers. Coca-Cola uses generative AI to explore creativity. Refik Anadol's artwork “Unsupervised” at MOMA brings a continuous flow of stunning images that embody and transform each other, imagining a new Creetech era.

Augmented marketing is the future of marketing

Beauty marketing is already powered by purpose, multisensory experiences (offline, online, on-chain), and data. Now it is powered by generative AI.

• Purpose-enhanced beauty marketing: Our social and corporate responsibility program at Group level is called “L'Oréal for the Future.'' Our brand is about purpose. In support of women's empowerment, L'Oréal Paris, the world's No. 1 beauty brand, announced on March 8, 2020, a stand-up girl who fights street harassment and empowers women to walk freely towards their destiny. program was established. This was done in partnership with Hollaback, experts in the fight against sexual harassment.

• Beauty marketing powered by multi-sensory experiences: We believe the future of beauty will be physical, digital and virtual. We are continually reinventing the experience of beauty. We are building new beauty codes like Ready Player Me's Avatar Hair from the brand L'Oréal Professionnel. We brought virtual makeup to Teams as Maybelline partnered with Microsoft to offer her “Ready in a Click” virtual makeup bag with 12 different looks.

• O+O Beauty Marketing Powered by Data: With BeautyTech, we are building new kinds of relationships with consumers based on technology, data, and AI. We have unparalleled data on beauty. It covers everything from ingredient data to hair and skin science, beauty habits to valuable consumer insights since our founding more than a century ago. We already have thousands of terabytes in our L'Oréal Beautytech data platform, and through AI we are leveraging this data to create the future of beauty. We provide and guide consumers with his O+O services (with virtual try-on of makeup and hair color based on A/R). Diagnose (AI-based skin diagnosis and personalized recommendations, e.g. La Roche Posay Spotscan or Lancome Skinscreen). It is about predicting (moving from diagnosis to prognosis) and teaching about beauty.

• Beauty Marketing Powered by Gen AI: This technology breaks new ground. This has the potential to enable marketers to quickly realize creativity, improve efficiency, and ultimately deliver a better consumer experience. We are exploring multiple use cases in marketing across content/creativity (with gen AI Content Lab), services, consumer care, search, and AI products embedded in our platform. We have just launched L'Oréal Paris Beauty Genius, a Gen AI-powered personal beauty advisor available 24/7 in the consumer's pocket. Many consumers are currently struggling to find the right product, with 70% feeling overwhelmed by the amount of choice. So they ask friends, search online, and watch videos to try to make sense of the vast array of products available in stores. This is where L'Oréal Paris Beauty His Genius comes in, offering product curation, service suite and consumer care all in one.

Leveraging the power of 37 global brands, we continually enhance the beauty consumer journey.

Augmented marketing must be built on a strong digital core

• Power your marketing through purpose, O+O+O experiences, and data.

• For Gen AI to be useful, it requires existing strategic advantages, strengths, and maturity in many areas. For example, a prerequisite for reliable generated AI output is high-quality data.

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

At L'Oréal, we've been building a digital edge. We systematically track our company's advantages using clear KPIs. We are No. 1 in beauty voice share (measured at 23% SOV offline and online) and No. 1 in influence share (29% globally in beauty). A&P optimization is becoming more data-driven. BETIQ, our proprietary ROI tool, helps you focus on both short-term ROI and long-term brand equity. He is also making good progress when it comes to digital sustainability and responsibility, through a partnership with French startup Impact+ to measure and reduce his CO2 emissions through media campaigns.

• Our digital edge and success is reflected in our investor/analyst community as well as multiple external awards/accolades.

• In the Gartner Digital IQ Index for Personal Care in the United States, half of the top 10 brands belong to the L'Oréal Group.

• At the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the brand Maybelline won the Silver Award in the Social and Influence Games category.

• Maybelline's “Ready in a Click” virtual makeup partnership with Microsoft was named a CES 2024 Innovation Award Winner in the Web3 and Metaverse Technology category.

• Cerave's digital and social-based growth strategy has made it the most popular brand in Ad Age America, along with Barbie and ChatGPT.

• L’Oréal Group has been named “Corporate Startup Star” at the 2023 Global Open Innovation Awards (by Mind the Bridge and International Chamber of Commerce).

We have five guiding principles that continue to strengthen our strong digital core.

• Innovation @ Core: Know what's starting.

• Scale at the core: With unified strategic objectives and strong operational capabilities, we drive efficiency and effectiveness while continually introducing new capabilities and skills.

• Simplicity 2 @ Core: Make time for what matters most.

• Beauty Tech @ the core: We leverage technology to help deliver beauty to each individual.

• People, people, people@core.

And finally, Gen AI will bring creativity and technology closer together than ever before. With his three main pillars of innovation: science, technology and creativity, L'Oréal is well placed to exploit the potential of new technologies. To me, the real opportunity for tomorrow's marketers will be found at the intersection of right and left brain powering marketing.

Click here to learn more about Asmita.

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 here. WFA has extended the voting period exclusively for The Drum readers. It closes at noon (BST) on Friday 2nd. The winner will be crowned on February 27th.

Aude Gandon, Nestlé's Global CMO, today released a marketing manifesto. A killer creative operation is nothing without a killer creative idea.