#MarketingEventsAwards 2020 highlight: How L'Oréal MY leveraged on livestreaming to beautify the new normal post-MCO

L'Oréal Malaysia with its event agency partner IDOTYOU took home one gold for Best use of Live Streaming and Marketing and bronze for Best Retail/Shopper Agency at this year’s Marketing Events Awards 2020. The award show also saw L'Oréal Malaysia’s agency IDOTYOU’s chief Dorothy Fong being crowned Marketing Events Champion (Agency). All of this came around despite the beauty industry going through turbulence as more and more consumers still stay at home in Malaysia

Challenge

This year, beauty took a backseat during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020 as consumers prepared to deal with few unforeseen circumstances. Given that many are still skeptical to go to the mall for shopping due to social distancing rules, retail businesses clearly took a hit. L'Oréal Malaysia knew it needed an innovative marketing solution for business recovery post movement control order (MCO) lockdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many retail businesses to suffer. Many retailers turned to digital and eCommerce rapidly to connect with their customers and sell online. One of the most common ways retailers did so was by leveraging on Facebook and Instagram livestreaming to do the selling, given the volume of consumers on the platforms and the cost-effective way in reaching them.

Strategy

Knowing this, L'Oréal Malaysia decided to host a Virtual Beauty Festival which spanned over 12-Hours on Facebook Live. Eight Luxury brands under L'Oréal Luxe – Lancome, Kiehl’s, Biotherm, Shu Uemura, Urban Decay, YSL Beauty, Armani Beauty and IT Cosmetics – came together and celebrated the return to new normal with the first mega virtual beauty festival.

The live event offered irresistible exclusive deals and commercial sets, invited over 30 Malaysia icons and influencers such as Neelofa, Daiyan Trisha and Jenn Chia as the main host to share beauty tips, testimonials, crash test and special performance. More importantly, it allowed consumers to chat with L'Oréal’s beauty advisors via Facebook Messenger, or shop for the products and make purchases instantly via L'Oréal’s social commerce solution.

The ability to be able to get skincare consultation from their beauty advisors and then immediately purchase the limited edition exclusive deals all within Facebook was the key to great success to ROI. The event was held on a Saturday to allow people to tune in and shop on their off day.

Execution

To put together such big scale of a virtual beauty event for eight esteemed brands requires a rock solid plan to execute it all within only three weeks lead time given:

• Project management team – IDOTYOU deployed its programme consultants to work with eight brands on coming out with their Facebook Live content strategy, coordinate with the hosts and KOLs involved in the segments, providing scripts and talking points, as well as project managing all the logistics and props needed for the Live Event.
  
  
• Venue – A venue that is big enough to cater for eight brands’ working teams and with great WIFI connections for the 12-Hour Facebook Live was crucial. IDOTYOU turned to Metal Bees Brick Studio which was perfect for the requirements.
  
  
• Hosts and key opinion leaders (KOLs) – One of the key success factors is to have great hosts that can anchor the 12-Hour Facebook Live with lively conversations with all the guests and beauty consultants. Famous YouTuber Jenn Chia was engaged as the main host for the live event. Malaysia icons such as Neelofa and Daiyan Trisha and over 30 KOLs were invited to the festival event and that became key pulling factor to attract audiences to tune in and watch the Facebook Live.
  
  
• Pre-live RSVP to Event – To ensure target customers will tune in and watch the Live, we first ran pre-live awareness campaign to allow people to RSVP to the event. Each brand offered a beauty kit for their audiences to redeem at the store and try out their heroes products prior to the beauty event. This is a great way to do product trials and then retarget them for the Facebook Live event.
  
  
• Pre-live strong awareness on exclusive deals – Eight brands designed their respective exclusive Virtual Beauty Festival sets. To ensure strong awareness on the exclusive commercial sets during the festival event, brands leverage on their digital media buy with attractive six second video ads to promote their exclusive sets.
  
  
• D-Day Facebook Live – During the 12-Hours Facebook Live, the team continued to bring in more beauty enthusiasts to come and watch the Facebook Live by boosting the live video with digital media buy. Overlay banners were carefully and tastefully designed to communicate on how to purchase or get live beauty advices from the beauty advisors and feature all the irresistible exclusive sets.

Consumers who watched and engaged with the brands during the 12-Hour Facebook Live but have not purchased were retargeted via digital media buy post campaign. Conversations with customers continue via the chatbot and Beauty Advisors to assist them on their purchases.

Results

The execution saw over 17,000 chats in 24 hours and 2.6 million individuals reached. There was also a 12% post engagement rate and a four times increase in sales compared to daily average.