L'Oréal, the world's largest beauty and cosmetics company, boasts a uniquely close bond with its customers. Since its founding in Paris in 1909, L'Oréal has been enhancing beauty and indulging millions of people worldwide. L'Oréal's remarkable expansion has been propelled by a series of acquisitions, including renowned brands such as Lancôme, Maybelline, and Redken. While Facebook helped L’Oréal make deep incursions into its potential customer base, Snapchat helped the beauty brand further expand its reach and influence.
So, today let’s take a look at how L’Oréal made the most of Snapchat and drove maximum digital impact through three of its campaigns.
1. L’Oreal Men Expert
L’Oreal Men Expert leveraged Snapchat’s ad solutions to create an immersive styling experience so that it could engage Snapchatters in Germany with its products.
Their Objective
L’Oreal Men Expert campaign aimed to drive high engagement & increase education on its products.
Solution & Approach
By playing with the L’Oreal Men Expert Lens, Snapchat users were given the opportunity to try out various styling products and to help them determine their favorite look. This resulted in over 1.1 M Snapcha users playing with the Lens or receiving a Lens recording from their friends.
Moreover, L’Oreal placed Snapcodes of the Lens in over 2000 dm-stores nationwide (drugstore chain), directly at the POS. Through the Snapcode, potential buyers could try out the L’Oreal Men Expert styling products in the store and purchase their favorite products. The Snapcode unlocked an average Lens playtime of 106s.
A variety of L’Oreal Men Expert filters enabled Snapchat users to add a “styling” context to their Snaps. As a consequence, L’Oreal became part of the conversation between friends. The average share rate of 5.7% helped the filter earn a total reach of 59%.
The Result
The L’Oreal Men Expert performed extraordinarily well and led to an increase of 6 points each in L’Oreal’s brand awareness and brand favorability. Moreover, there was a rise of 4 points in purchase intent for the brand.
2. L’Oréal’s YSL Black Opium
Black Opium conducted a two-wave test on Snapchat, one during Holiday 2020 seeking to understand the role of adding Extended Play (EP) Commercials, and the other during Valentine’s Day seeking to understand the relative contribution of adding an AR Lens to the existing ad product mix.
Their Objective
The Black Opium campaign sought to increase reach with a younger audience by testing and learning.
Solution & Approach
During Holiday 2020, YSL Black Opium leveraged Extended Play (EP) Commercials in conjunction with Snap Ads to tell the story of Black Opium Fragrance. YSL partnered with Snapchat to reach an audience of women aged 18-35. The multi-ad product approach contributed above-norm performance for all metrics, with a significant boost in both Product Awareness as well as Purchase Intent. This resulted in a halo effect on YSL Beauté conversion media running concurrently, where the brand observed a lift in Purchases 3x the norm.
The Holiday 2020 campaign had already proven the efficacy of a Snap Ads + Extended Play (EP) Commercials execution. It had driven lifts throughout the funnel, from awareness to conversion. For Valentine’s Day, AR Lenses were added to the mix to determine if the power of three ad products was greater than the power of two. Adding the AR Lens contributed to even stronger performance against norms.
The Result
The YSL Black Opium campaign performed better than the brand’s expectations as it resulted in a 2x lift in Product Awareness and a 5x lift in Purchase Intent. On the other hand, Valentine’s 2021 campaign led to a 3x lift in Product Awareness and a 5.4x lift in Purchase Intent.
3. L’Oréal Paris Mascara
L’Oréal Paris ran America’s #1 Mascara campaign on Snapchat in Q1 2021.
Their Objectives
L’Oréal wanted to drive association and authentic representation of the brand.
Solution & Approach
With awareness and association being key performance indicators, L’Oréal Paris partnered with Snapchat to reach an audience of Snapchat users over the age of 13 by partnering with NBCU’s E! The Rundown to run ads in the Discover platform of curated content.
The show was a natural fit for finding beauty and fashion enthusiasts, and as part of Snapchat’s partner shows, is brand safe by design. The approach contributed more than double the norm for lift in Ad Awareness.
The Result
L’Oréal Paris Mascara’s Snapchat campaign performed exceptionally well. The campaign led to a +9pts lift in Recommendation Intent and a +10pts lift in Brand Imagery.
Bottom Line
Snapchat is now considered a top-notch marketing platform for brands targeting millennials and GenZ users. Brands can utilize Snapchat's diverse features to create personalized geographical filters, insert video ads in live stories, use longer videos, and add direct CTAs to captivate their audience. Nonetheless, to succeed in marketing through Snapchat, a well-defined strategy is imperative. With a well-planned marketing strategy in place, outcomes from Snapchat marketing campaigns will not be a concern.