What you need to know:

• L’Oreal backing blockchain and NFTs to deliver web3 early commercial advantage, per Asmita Dubey, L’Oreal Chief Digital & Marketing Officer.
• AI-powered personalisation driving acquisition, retention and ecomm.
• Moving into decentralised communities via NYX Professional Beauty plus NFTs and utilities and collectibles with brands like Yves Saint Laurent Beauty and Mugler.
• “We are laying the foundation for web3 by calling it 'on-chain beauty' because it is going to be on the chain more and more.” – Asmita Dubey

L’Oreal is backing blockchain and NFTs to deliver web3 early commercial advantage, according to Asmita Dubey, L’Oreal Chief Digital & Marketing Officer.

The beauty giant has made major strides using current digital technologies, with “more than a billion” digital applications of its AI-powered foundation shade finder, Dubey told a Deloitte Digital CMO forum in Cannes, and a strategic shift to what she called “O+O+O” commerce – or online, offline and on-chain.

Web2 versus web3

While much remains uncertain about how web3 will play out, Dubey thinks commercial advantage is already within sight.

“If you look at web2, it’s is about live streaming, video, AI, machine learning, voice, SaaS data, cloud, automation – all of that is very much in deployment in the world, everywhere.” She said that applies to L’Oreal. “We're doing tons of live streaming – last year we did more than 10,000 [individual] live streams, we are mastering TikTok. So Web2 is very much in deployment,” said Dubey.

“Then there is the new digital reality … and there has been a tipping point in 2021,” she suggested of the incoming iteration of the web.

“Web3 starts with gaming and it goes to technologies like AR, VR, blockchain, spatial computing. Then we come to virtual spaces, virtual avatars, virtual influence, virtual identity, even virtual products and collectibles. The way we are thinking about it is we are laying the foundations for web3 and we are laying the foundation for web3 by calling it 'on-chain beauty' because it is going to be on the chain more and more,” said Dubey.

“So we are laying foundations for on-chain beauty, but with our feet also firmly grounded in web2 acceleration.”

Decentralising 'social beauty'

Dubey cited LA-based NYX Professional Makeup as an example of L’Oreal’s early moves into the metaverse. The digital-native brand last month outlined what it termed ‘the world's first DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) focused on fostering the development of the 3D artist community’.

Dubey attempted to translate that into layman’s terms.

“The DNA of the brand is about makeup artistry, it's about entertainment, it's about community – and the brand has been pioneering 'social beauty' from the start of Instagram. So what the brand wants to do is empower 3D creators that are coming up. So the brand will become the first ever decentralised record label for creators in web3,” said Dubey.

“It will start interacting more with 3D makeup artists, animators, software engineers, it will work with blockchain experts, even more marginalised communities. Overall, this will be the first ever community DAO – and communities and community empowerment is one way that we are looking at the web3 and starting to work towards it,” she added.

“Then we are, of course looking at NFTs and utilities and collectibles with brands like Yves Saint Laurent Beauty and Mugler.”

Web2: personalisation gains

In the meantime, L’Oreal’s current digital initiatives are paying off, said Dubey, who noted a shift towards digital services over product and from “digitalisation to virtualisation” over the last 18 months.

“What we are seeing it that beauty journeys are becoming more mature in ‘O+O’, which is offline plus online, but evolving to 'O+O+O', which is offline plus online plus on-chain,” said Dubey.

She cited L’Oreal’s acquisition of ModiFace – which uses AI and VR to enable people to try make-up or hair colours virtually – as an example of that shift.

“There is an age old problem: What is my foundation shade? Now with technology and data and AI, we are able to create services and devices which are shade finders. So you can take a physical device and [find your shade], or just use the same thing online, on the website, on social, on search – anywhere,” said Dubey.

After acquiring ModiFace in 2018, L’Oreal invested to scale its applications over the pandemic, when people couldn’t go into stores to try on products. Dubey said that strategy is paying off.

“We’ve now had over a billion try-ons over that period – and that is also helping drive conversion for the PDPs [product development pages] to do more ecommerce.”