Euromonitor Podcast on Digital Trends in Beauty: If We All Already Know These Basics, How Do We Differentiate?

In preparation for my participation in the L'Oreal Brandstorm competition, whose focus this year is on developing an integrated digital strategy for La Roche Posay, I was looking into some Euromonitor analyses on what makes a successful digital strategy and ended up listening to a podcast that focuses on this topic. It was actually surprising to find that the research mentioned aren’t that much of a surprise to what I’ve already learned through my work at Vain Pursuits. 

The four pillars for a digital strategy in beauty were noted to be: engagement, personalization, curation and best price. The Euromonitor analyst emphasized the importance of having a holistic approach and thinking of overall brand development through the digital strategy. In terms of engagement, the advantages of conversing with customers were highlighted, being that this allows marketers to harness more data on customers’ behaviours and their beauty regimes and that it can lead to higher brand loyalty as customers’ needs are more accurately identified and met. Personalization is no doubt another obvious pillar, as customers are looking for more tailored solutions especially when it comes to skincare. What surprised me was that the two main trends identified to address this pillar were virtual try on and skin analysis, trends that I have already been familiar with, from learning about L’Oreal’s Makeup Genius App to being highly acquainted with Vain Pursuits’ business model. 

This podcast itself did not present me with any revolutionary ideas or findings. However, it has led me to consider an important question: how salient have the successful factors of digital in beauty become? In a sense, it seems almost like most digital marketing individuals and brands have caught on to what people want. We see apps and brands incorporating augmented reality growing by the day and there isn’t really anything that you can’t get personalized, particularly in beauty. How exactly then, can a beauty brand differentiate itself on digital and find the disruptive technology that will propel it in this saturated digital beauty playing field? This is something I really hope to find out soon,  as I know my Brandstorm fate is heavily dependent on the answer.