How Will The Future Of The Beauty Industry Look Like?

How Will The Future Of The Beauty Industry Look Like?

The year 2020 hit the cosmetics industry hard, with revenues dropping in all markets. Due to Covid-19 lifestyle changes, people have less motivation to purchase nonessential goods, especially cosmetics items. While so many were stuck with this situation, some brands resisted the negative impact and managed to improve their bottom line. 

By investing in digital transformation and technologies, L’Oréal Thailand – a niche cosmetic brand has launched the “Virtual Lipstick Try-on” Campaign as the new way to reach and satisfy the customers.

Which type of technology was applied to this campaign?

Was this campaign successful?

Keep reading this case study and you will find out!

Beauty Industry Not Looking Good Since Covid-19 Pandemic

Due to the high demand of Thai women for beauty products, the cosmetics market in the country always keeps its long-standing reputation as evergreen and immune to a bad economy. However, since social distancing measures have prevented shoppers from testing beauty products or having fun experiences when trying them on, they were less likely to purchase those things. 

Wilasinee Parnurat, chief marketing officer of Yves Rocher Thailand said Thailand’s cosmetics sector is still in the doldrums, with sales down 9% in the first five months of this year.

By category, the value of makeup products and fragrances fell by 30% and 25%, respectively, while the skincare sector dropped by 8%.

Last year the Thai beauty market tallied 127 billion baht, falling from 145 billion in 2019 and 137 billion in 2018. This affected both small companies and international giants, making them temporarily close thousands of stores to wait for a better situation. 

How Did L’Oréal Thailand Respond?

Despite the worsening market conditions, L’Oréal has taken advantage of the augmented reality (AR) trend and combined it with the accessibility of channels like YouTube to make the shopping experience at home become funnier and easier than ever. 

This trend coincides with the massive growth of e-commerce. Since shoppers were stuck at home with nothing to do, they tended to go online for shopping and entertainment. As a consequence of this, there was 25% of new digital users in Thailand purchasing beauty goods online for the first time, which is an encouraging indication for beauty brands. 

In order to engage shoppers where they are and take the Thai beauty industry to the next level, L’Oréal Thailand has adopted a new ads format, YouTube’s AR Beauty Try-On solution, for their subsidiary brand Maybelline Super Stay Matte Ink product line. 

Fun Time with Virtual Lipstick Try-on

Shoppers still need to explore beauty products in the same way they did before the crisis. Trying on cosmetics in stores has always been a pleasant and memorable aspect of the shopping experience. Customers just like experimenting with different looks in stores, aside from the necessity of determining the right shade and tone to suit specific skin types.

Understanding this, Maybelline Thailand created Eatproof – a one-minute creative video highlighting the selling points of Super Stay Matte Ink product line. This was accompanied by a virtual try-on function, in which customers could learn all about the product and try up to 12 shades of lipstick in real-time using only the YouTube mobile app.

Very Smooth Shopping Journey

The YouTube AR Beauty Try-On function includes a call-to-action (CTA) overlay to encourage users to press the AR try-on button, which helped viewers transition easily from the video to the virtual try-on. Moreover, with the YouTube AR Beauty Try-On ad, shoppers could also make the transition from ad to purchase in a matter of seconds. When customers were ready to buy, there was a clear CTA to “shop now,” which direct them to a specific product page on their e-commerce partner Lazada’s website.

Use the Right Channels at the Right Time to Drive Traffic

In order to boost conversion and reach sales targets, Maybelline Thailand utilized YouTube CPM Masthead to prominently display their video creative in the YouTube Home feed across devices. By doing this, they reached 50% of women aged 18 to 44 across Thailand, with 30% of those users engaging with the AR try-on function — figures 3X higher than the average global engagement numbers generated by similar L’Oréal lipstick YouTube AR Try-On ads.