Digital Revolution: how L’Oréal is embracing this new Marketing era?
One thing to learn from the changing times is to distinguish the essential from the temporary. This is what revolutions do, they change the provisional to keep the essential safe. Dario, Brand Business Leader Haircare at L’Oréal Paris UK & Ireland tells us about his journey within this revolution and what new challenges Marketing at L’Oréal is facing to achieve a goal that has always been the same: to make people feel good about themselves.
Hi Dario! L’Oréal is embracing new marketing codes, tell us more about it!
It’s true, market disruption asks us to rewrite the way we do business on the marketing side. We rethink everything that was marketing at L’Oréal until today to reformulate it into a new concept of work organization aimed at facing new challenges of complexity, speed and inter-functionality that the great revolution of the digital world has brought to marketing.
How did you respond to this change?
We have reorganized the entire team by redefining roles and tasks: where before there was only one generalist figure, usually called product manager, now there are new professional figures specialized in certain areas with a deeper focus on expertise: this allows us to have specialists who work together to create effective responses to all kinds of questions that business do.
What is your role in this game and what are the benefits for the team?
Being Brand Business Leader means coordinating the movements of all the “wheels” around me: it’s like being the pivot of a gear that turns and comes to life thanks to the collaboration of all the team members. My task is to ensure synergy between them and to create a productive dialogue between different expertise. Agility and flexibility are the greatest achievements of this transformation that is not to be thought of as a taylor-based sectorialisation but the creation of a dynamic and enriching cog both for the employees, who can take turns between the various roles over time and for the final output of the system. This has allowed us to get the best of both worlds: start-up agility and big company expertise.
How does the team live this new organization?
Each one of us is a fundamental piece of the puzzle, despite the fact that everyone’s focus is on a particular field we are all aware of the overall picture and we walk together towards the common goal. Over time everyone can deepen their expertise so that they can immerse themselves completely and deeply in all fields of marketing. This creates a priceless value for each team member and for the team as a whole.
What has this renaissance in marketing been for?
Our goal is to create value for the consumer and the company at every point of contact between them. Never before have moments of connection multiplied: from physical points to websites to a more direct and personalized contact on social media. This new way of marketing aims to establish reliable communication with the consumer, who has always been at the heart of L’Oréal’s business model.
What’s the big news about this way of marketing?
Marketing has always been the function that takes care of the consumer and never before has this been so true: from the new organizational structure of the work to a new orientation of objectives. Our new organization of Marketing integrates emotional and humanistic marketing with previous knowledge and aims to identify the anxieties and desires of consumers and their will to live in a better world to propose creative and engaging solutions.
What does it mean for you to be able to contribute to all this and how did you get there?
I’m totally honored to be able to do what I love and to test myself with the challenges ahead of me: before becoming a Brand Business Leader here in the UK I spent years in Italy as product manager first, then as marketing manager at L’Oréal Paris. The experience of an internal move has crowned a dream I’ve had for a long time: as soon as the company’s needs matched my desire to discover new worlds, I was given the chance to pack my bags and be part of a brand new team that welcomed me with open arms. Living the passion for my work in different contexts has made me grow and acquire new teachings. The diversity of cultures and ways of doing things has caused me to question what was normal for me, to learn that we have a great equality in all diversity: the L’Oréal community is just that, people from everywhere with very different background who share a single goal, to take care of the beauty of the world.
How was it for you to move out?
When a company gives you the opportunity to grow internally through an experience abroad the value generated is exponential both for you, as you learn new ways of looking at the world and the business, and for the company that benefits from a dynamic growth of knowledge of the resources it invests in. I believe that exchange always generates value, that’s why I embraced the idea with great enthusiasm and I climbed this further step of my career with determination! After eight years in Italy I felt that I had acquired that seniority in marketing so much that I could launch myself into a new challenge, and so it was!
What tested you the most about all this and what you learned?
Surely there are many cultural differences and in the work context they are well rooted, but more than testing me, they gave me the opportunity to confront myself. The possibility of misunderstanding when you have a gesture and pathos like the Italian one in the London context is very much, but this led us to laugh when we realized we had misunderstood something. One thing that L’Oréal UK & Ireland has helped me to enhance was the work-life balance, I learned more than I already knew that to be brilliant in the office you have to shine even brighter when you stay out of it!
Are you willing to lead the change in the world of marketing? Do you wish for a dynamic career like Dario’s? Find out more about our open positions!
NB: All pictures have been taken before the COVID emergency.
Originally published at https://medium.com on September 23, 2020.
