Trends + affinity = love
When the team at L'Oréal Paris chose to promote the launch of their new range of Pure Clay masks in all digital environments, they knew they wanted to use advanced marketing techniques to increase brand awareness and drive effectiveness. The first step was to build a task force made up of their in-house marketing team, iBeauty by Publicis Media, and Google Marketing Platform, which would help them identify and understand the right market.
The team consolidated all media buying into Google Display & Video 360 so it would be possible to control frequency and reach users a pre-defined number of times. To ensure messaging would resonate, L'Oréal Paris identified audiences that had an interest in beauty products and already had an affinity to the brand.
L'Oréal used Google Trends to understand the topics people were searching for around the subject of facial masks, and they matched this information to the key benefits of their products. Using custom affinity audiences, the team then identified five audiences within the desired demographic. Using their own first-party information, the team used Google Marketing Platform to distinguish these audiences based on user behaviors — what they were searching for, what videos they were watching, their interests, and their passions.
The team launched the campaign by delivering video ads through multiple channels, including TrueView on YouTube. This introduced users to the first two phases of the funnel — brand awareness and consideration. Customers were initially shown videos based on the segments defined in Display & Video 360. In a second exposure, they were shown another video, adding a storytelling angle to the campaign.
Three’s company
L'Oréal and iBeauty by Publicis Media leaned on the measurement capabilities of Google Marketing Platform, which was crucial in developing an understanding of users’ behavior and engagement over all publishers and channels. It also helped them gain a complete understanding of the customer journey from first exposure to landing on the website.
Equipped with this comprehensive view, L'Oréal Paris was able to help the consumers choose the right products, provide education, and motivate consumers to find more content. This approach effectively introduced users to the product before driving them to the brand’s website and owned content.
Picture perfect
The campaign produced excellent results, with a cost per view that was half the benchmark for consumer packaged goods in Italy. At 39%, the view-through rate beat the country’s 25% average benchmark for consumer packaged goods. L'Oréal Paris also used a brand lift survey and discovered the campaign produced a 37% lift in ad recall and 13% lift in brand awareness.
