L'Oréal booth at the 7th edition of Viva Tech
This is a time of crisis and opportunity.
Even industry giants need to maintain a vigilant attitude and meet the unknown challenges ahead with a constantly self-forcing attitude of change.
Regarding the current market environment, L'Oréal North Asia President and China CEO Febriel once concluded that L'Oréal Group believes that the world has completed the transition from the VUCA (Volatile unstable, Uncertain, Complex complex, ambiguous) era to BANI (Brittle fragile and fragile, Anxious anxious, Nonlinear unpredictable, Incomprehensive) era change.
In L'Oréal's view, as a leading company in the beauty industry, L'Oréal needs to have the boldness and strength of a T-Rex leader, as well as the flexibility and creativity of a unicorn starter, in order to see and grasp new things at any time.
From the very beginning, science and innovation were ingrained in L'Oréal's DNA. In 2018, L'Oréal Group set out its vision to transform from a beauty company to a beauty technology company, and announced that it wanted to become the "number one beauty technology company". Since then, the pursuit and emphasis on beauty technology has allowed L'Oréal to gradually regain the temperament of a unicorn starter. It is also under the influence of this strategic adjustment that in 2022, the Group achieved sales of 38.26 billion euros, a consolidated growth of +18.5%, the best sales and growth rate in 10 years.
Becoming a beauty tech company is much more than just shouting slogans. According to Asmita DUBEY, L'Oréal Group's chief digital marketing officer, the most important thing in L'Oréal's transformation into a beauty technology company is to build corresponding capabilities.
In an exclusive conversation with Titanium Media APP, she said that L'Oréal has nearly 5,900 employees in the field of data and technology, and this number continues to grow. In addition, L'Oréal aims to educate all marketers about digital marketing – the company has now trained around 67,000 people on how to optimize the way they work through digital marketing. "We want to simplify the way we work so we have time to think, work, meet, talk and innovate together."
It can be seen that after 5 years of transformation and exploration, beauty technology innovation has become the core driving force of L'Oréal.
At the seventh edition of Viva Tech, held in Paris from June 14 to 17, L'Oréal Group celebrated the theme of "Creating unparalleled beauty for all." "Beauty for all & Beauty for each" as the theme of the exhibition. From AI-driven skincare solutions to personalized beauty devices to reinventing new codes of beauty, L'Oréal, as a beauty tech giant, is using technology to accelerate its transformation, while also driving the progress of the entire industry and society.
Creating unparalleled beauty for all • Creating unique beauty for everyone
As the world's most influential science and technology innovation exhibition, this year's Viva Tech is very lively.
French President Emmanuel Macron called for global collaboration to develop AI regulations at the meeting; Musk warned that AI is the most disruptive technology ever, and if not careful, it could have disastrous consequences, and on the other hand, announced that his brain-computer connection technology company Neuralink will conduct its first human trial within this year...
As a beauty technology company, L'Oréal has brought the world's first smart thrush artifact Shu Uemura 3D exclusive eyebrow makeup, NYX Professional Makeup, the world's first beauty DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) GORJS, the world's first intelligent handheld high-precision makeup application device Lancôme HAPTA, home dyeing wands L'Oréal Paris COLORSONIC and L'Oreal Pro's water-saving shampoo and hair care artifact WATER SAVER. Creative and practical products.
According to Asmita's observation, today's consumers have a strong pursuit of health, which is undoubtedly the change brought about by the pandemic and post-pandemic. With this change, L'Oréal's Dermatologic beauty brand is growing rapidly around the world.
Based on this demand, L'Oréal has also begun to gradually introduce big data and artificial intelligence technology into the field of beauty applications. Take La Roche-PoN'S SPOTSCAN AS AN EXAMPLE, WHICH CAN TURN MOBILE PHONES INTO ACNE AND PIGMENTATION DETECTORS, PROVIDE CONSUMERS WITH SKIN AI ANALYSIS SOLUTIONS, PROVIDE REMOTE DIAGNOSIS THROUGH DOCTORS AND GUIDANCE ON PRODUCT USE. It is reported that the product can provide AI-based skin diagnosis and skin care guidance services for 40% of adults and 80% of adolescent acne patients worldwide.
L'OREAL PARIS'S COLORSONIC HOME DYEING WAND IS ANOTHER PRODUCT BORN BASED ON THE NEEDS OF THE EPIDEMIC. This lightweight handheld device automatically blends curative hair colouring formulas and can be used to evenly colour hair in just a few minutes. Its ergonomic design allows users to achieve perfect dyeing even in the hardest-to-reach places. PAIRED WITH A HAIR COLOR CORE WITH 1 SHADE (40 PURE HAIR COLORS), L'L'OREAL PARIS SOLVES THE FOUR CHALLENGES OF MANUAL HAIR COLORING – DIFFICULT EXECUTION, CHAOTIC SCENES, SLOW PROCESSES AND UNEVEN COLORING. As a result, this product was also voted one of Time magazine's best inventions of 2022.
This product has also been praised by Asmita. According to her, L'Oréal will launch this product next year 2024. "We believe it will be very successful and it will apply to everyone. We have the ability to create unique beauty for everyone. ”
In addition to providing insight into consumer needs and providing more personalized products, technology can also provide more comprehensive help for users who are inherently flawed.
For 50 million people around the world who have fine motor skills disorders, the delicate operation process of makeup is a big challenge. In response to this problem, Lancôme launched the world's first smart handheld high-precision makeup application device HAPTA, a CES® 2023 innovation award-winning product that can achieve all-round rotation through automatic leveling technology with built-in real-time sensors, helping users with movement impairments on their hands and arms to apply lipstick smoothly.
According to Asmita, in 2022, L'Oréal delivered around 40 million digital services to consumers. This year, this number will continue to grow rapidly. From makeup techniques to skin testing, L'Oréal is using the power of beauty technology to make beauty services more intimate and efficient for consumers around the world.
Beauty technology, in addition to greatly improving product performance, can also bring richer imagination to consumers in the virtual world.
In February, L'Oréal's NYX Professional Makeup launched a DAO online beauty incubator called GORJS and 1,000 Ethereum NFTs called "FKWME Pass." From alien glass skin, to shape-shifting element eyelashes, as the world's first beauty DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), the launch of GORJS marks the latest bold exploration of the beauty industry in the digital age.
In addition, NYX Professional makeup brings creators together on Discord, an online chat room, and its Discord community brings together 16,000 members to vote for their favorite artists and their work.
"I think it's going mainstream for consumers to be creators." Asmita believes that the physical world and the digital and virtual worlds are parallel. In the gaming industry, for example, nearly half of the world's 5 billion gamers are women. Female gamers started out as spectators, then became gamers, and gradually began to express themselves through virtual characters in the game. Today, in games, women are both spectators, players, and expressors.
However, in the face of whether beauty technology can have a place in the virtual world. There are skeptical voices in the industry, in this regard, Asmita told Titanium Media APP that people today are more willing to seek shared experiences, whether physical, digital or virtual. People are more willing to celebrate, to pursue happy experiences, to increase mutual communication, to pursue shared experiences. "There will be more and more creators in the world. So we face not challenges, but opportunities. ”
Asmita DUBEY, Chief Digital Marketing Officer of L'Oréal Group
Transforming the beauty tech industry with open innovation
However, to seize new trends and opportunities, it is not enough to rely on the native capabilities of leading enterprises. Enterprises need to explore and promote diversified technology solutions to bring more inspiration and driving to the industry.
As early as 2020, L'Oréal set up China's first beauty technology challenge "L'Oréal BIG BANG Beauty Technology Creation Camp", which aims to tap the potential of China's beauty technology, which has received a very enthusiastic response in the industry. The competition not only provides perfect support for Chinese start-ups, but also opens a French track with Business France for French start-ups interested in exploring the Chinese market. After three years of development, BIG BANG has attracted more than 1,500 Chinese start-ups and 20 French companies, incubated more than 50 landing projects, expanded its coverage to the entire North Asian region including Japan and South Korea, and selected leading technology projects including biodegradable polymers and intelligent picking robots. This year, the fourth edition of BIG BANG will link up with Shanghai Meifang Investment Co., Ltd., the first investment company established by L'Oréal in China, for the first time, to further empower China's open innovation ecosystem and promote technological change in the beauty industry and ecosystem.
The successful pilot in China has provided inspiration for the upgrade of the BIG BANG project. At the Viva Tech, L'Oréal officially announced the launch of the "BIG BANG North Asia Beauty Technology Creation Camp".
It is understood that L'Oréal Group established the North Asia region in 2021, covering Chinese mainland, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, these five cultures closely echo but have their own characteristics, hoping to further exert regional synergies and enlighten the global beauty market.
In line with the Group's beauty tech vision, L'Oréal has established North Asia as one of the world's top three beauty tech hubs. Many innovations were born here, such as Shu Uemura's 3D shu eyebrow makeup, a product developed by L'Oréal in collaboration with a Korean start-up. This CES® 2023 Innovation Award-winning beauty tech product makes it easy for consumers to personalize, professional eyebrow finish in seconds.
At this year's Viva Tech, L'Oréal Group officially launched the first regional open innovation project BIG BANG, signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Korean Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Start-ups, and announced that the Japanese "J-Startup" entrepreneurship support program jointly initiated by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Japan External Trade Organization will also support BIG BANG, marking another important milestone in beauty technology innovation and regional synergy.
"BIG BANG North Asia Beauty Technology Creation Camp" ribbon-cutting ceremony
L'Oréal will cooperate with Japan, South Korea and other markets to leverage the advantages of digital and artificial intelligence technology-driven beauty devices, skin detection and delivery systems, biotechnology, material science and environmental technologies, and further link the R&D and innovation centers in Shanghai and Tokyo and the unique innovation center in Seoul to fully unleash the innovation potential of the regional market.
Fabri, President and CEO of L'Oréal North Asia and China, said: "At present, North Asia has become the most active beauty market, accounting for 32% of the world, with a consumer group with the ultimate and demanding pursuit of beauty. With the 'Golden Delta of Beauty' strategy in China, Japan and South Korea, we maximize the synergy between these markets that closely echo these cultures and have a unique innovation ecosystem." BIG BANG is an excellent stage to break through the era of 'integration' and promote innovation, we hope to drive a group of innovative stars with dreams, explore more potential innovative companies, incubate forward-looking innovation achievements and promote their commercial landing, and further build China's beauty technology ecosystem." ”
In addition to pioneering the launch of the North Asia market plan with industry leadership, L'Oréal is also working with various partners such as start-ups, academia, and suppliers to explore comprehensive open innovation at all levels such as products and applications.
At the conference, 3 products jointly developed by L'Oréal and Verily, a precision health company under Alphabet, were exhibited:
The COHORT project will follow all study subjects over the next 4 years to understand how factors such as environment, sleep patterns, makeup habits and lifestyle affect individual skin health. The project will contribute to the creation of hyper-personalized skin health products and services based on individual biomarker profiles; In partnership with Verily Derm Assist, an information platform has been established that can track the condition of their skin in real time for 2 billion users around the world; The world's first smart handheld high-precision makeup application device HAPTA mentioned above was also jointly developed with Verily, which is also the world's first smart makeup application device for patients with movement disorders.
Also on display is Water Saver, a product launched by L'Oréal in collaboration with startups. The product uses the "Jet-Fusion" technology developed by the Swiss company Gjosa, which can reduce water consumption by 69% when washing hair. To date, the device has saved more than 42 million liters of water in hair salons around the world.
Water Saver
Through a partnership with Israeli company Breezometer, L'Oréal's experience in dermatology is combined with Breezometer's insights in allergens, UV rays and pollution to provide consumers with the most accurate daily beauty recommendations; Partnered with Clue, a global leader in women's tech, to develop products that address women's needs from puberty to menopause and beyond, by dissecting the relationship between skin health and women's menstrual cycles.
Unlike the role of technology in other fields (such as consumer electronics), the beauty revolution is essentially a reshaping of women's beauty from the inside out, so consumers' cognition, concepts, and feelings are always at the forefront and center of this revolution. Technology is just a service provider of beauty. Therefore, L'Oréal adopts the open innovation model, and widely absorbs advanced technologies from different industries around the world to serve today's consumers, so that it has a variety of flowers today. It also points out the direction for the future beauty revolution.
Let tech beauty take root in China
In the future beauty technology landscape, the Chinese market is the most important part.
"We are learning from Chinese consumers." Asmita, a former chief marketing officer of L'Oréal China, believes that China is a very complex beauty market. The number of Chinese middle class is still growing, and Chinese consumers are generally very proficient in digital products compared to the rest of the world.
Among them, the rapid development of live broadcast business is a typical representative of the Chinese market at the digital level.
"Live streaming is being promoted from China to the rest of the world." In Asmita's eyes, Chinese consumers are keen to learn about products through live streaming, interact with live broadcasters on the other end and buy products, and the entire consumption cycle is completed on live streaming. Driven by the Chinese market, the live broadcast business in Southeast Asia is also growing. "I think live streaming is very noteworthy, and we're strengthening our live streaming capabilities in China and then applying it to the rest of the world."
Therefore, the experience of the Chinese market also influences L'Oréal's thinking on digital marketing.
In terms of consumer insights, L'Oréal is collecting a large amount of consumer data from the bottom up, and making big data analysis a necessary capability for consumer insights by breaking down online and offline data silos.
From the discussion of beauty preferences, to the evaluation of L'Oréal products, to the use of big data to analyze the influence of KOLs and the corresponding consumer portraits behind them, so as to evaluate the cost performance and subsequent delivery effect... L'Oréal is using big data and AI capabilities to provide Chinese consumers with brands, products, services and experiences that interest them, while tracking their feedback in real time, actively improving and upgrading, and building brands that consumers really like.
According to Asmita, more than two-thirds of L'Oréal's business in China is online, and L'Oréal's e-commerce business in China accounts for more than the rest of the world. "When two-thirds of the company's business is online, working with Alibaba is a good choice."
This also makes the cooperation between L'Oréal and Alibaba inevitable.
In April, during the fifth meeting of the Sino-French Entrepreneurs Committee, Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, and Jean Paul AGON, Chairman of L'Oréal Group, signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly build the industry's "first digital beauty circular economy co-construction project". This is a three-year cooperation agreement, the two parties will cooperate in low-carbon commodities, low-carbon logistics, low-carbon marketing and consumer education, innovate the supply of green goods based on digital technology, explore full-link solutions such as green cycle warehousing, packaging, distribution, and recycling, and advocate sustainable lifestyles and enhance green consumption awareness among consumers.
The scientific and technological forces behind the beauty revolution have not only brought about the upgrading of products, but also pushed up the ceiling of consumers' pursuit of beauty. With the younger consumers and the online scenes, the way brands interact with consumers is changing day by day. The rise of beauty technology will to a certain extent break the value orientation of heavy marketing in the past beauty market, truly use the power of science and technology to gradually change consumers' perception of beauty, guide the entire industry to a higher dimension of development, and the ultimate beneficiary is each unique consumer.