The Most Consumer-Centric Campaign Yet
Digital is all about getting closer to the consumer. But how to do it right? Here are the 7 steps that helped Lancôme’s Interactive Marketing team create their Miracle Cushion campaign
1. Be insightful
Who is the modern woman? Independent, career-driven, keen to always look her best… but most of all, she is busy.
This is just the woman that Rhomé and her team in Lancôme’s Interactive Marketing department set out to conquer with their Miracle Cushion campaign: “The idea for Miracle Cushion was to be as consumer-centric as possible. We believed that the consumer insight that we had, the fact that women were seeking a perfect complexion at any time with the quickest of touch-ups, was a concern that women had globally. So that was the first thing: we built our concept on very strong consumer concerns.”
2. Go right to the core
“Miracle Cushion is a very innovative product so the idea was really to find a very surprising campaign that would be much more consumer-centric than anything we had done in the past.
“The idea was really to find a very surprising campaign that would be much more consumer-centric than anything we had done in the past.”
“The aim was to show that you can always have a perfect complexion no matter where you are. From this, the initial idea that emerged was ‘ten seconds to perfection’ and that became the fundamental concept of the campaign.”
3. Get thinking
It all starts with an idea… or rather ideas… and then more ideas… and then new ideas…
“The first idea… was based on action movies…”
“The first idea for the main component of the campaign was a film inspired by action movies, “ Rhomé explains. “It would show women in very different situations, for example a woman like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider doing a lot of actions, or a woman who has just woken up, but always with a perfect complexion to really show that the product is quick, fresh and portable.
“But we realised we needed to go even more consumer-centric in our approach, so we thought about creating a competition on Instagram using the hashtag #10secondstoperfection that would allow consumers to share their own ‘ten seconds to perfection’.”
For the launch, countries adapted the hashtag to fit trends in their markets and pictures were showcased on a Miracle Cusion minisite within each country’s Lancôme website. This leveraging of user-generated content by a premium luxury brand is a powerful example of the digital revolution currently underway in the beauty industry.
In addition, Miracle Cushion was the focus of Lancôme’s very first make-up tutorial with Creative Director Lisa Eldridge. Lisa rose to fame with her highly successful YouTube make-up tutorials: yet another example of how a consumer-centric digital approach is becoming a driving force.
4. Walk the tightrope
While a consumer-centric vision may be key, it’s important to not forget a brand’s most important asset: its identity. Rhomé and her team fine-tuned their ideas to ensure maximum consumer focus while maintaining coherence with the brand as a whole: “The more we thought about the action-movie idea, the more we felt it was too far from real women’s day-to-day life and we really wanted our consumers to be able to identify with the film. Secondly, we felt we had to get closer Lancôme’s spirit and so we adapted our initial idea to give it more of a French touch.”
In place of an action heroine, a modern Parisian woman goes about her busy day . As she rushes from from dashing off architectural plans to coffee with friends in a chic brasserie, stop-motion sequences add a heightened feeling of speed. By contrast, the moment she pulls out her Miracle Cushion case, time slows almost to a standstill. A rippling stream of liquid foundation evoke the fresh wave of innovation the product represents. The pervading poetic dreaminess is truly Lancôme with at the centre a woman who is both recognisable and aspirational.
5. Don’t forget the rest
The digital campaign was part of a much larger Miracle Cushion eco-system and it’s essential that coherence is maintained across the board. The digital strategy played a key role in shaping the campaign’s message, as Rhomé explains:
“One of the main challenges that we faced was really making sure that at every touchpoint, be it in merchandising, the message from beauty advisors, the digital or the print campaign, we would convey one strong message. And in fact it was a real success because for the first time the Merchandising team found the digital campaign so great that they decided to implement it in all stores, so you could see the ‘10 seconds to perfection’ hashtag on the displays, you could see the video we created on screens everywhere.”
6. Be adaptable
Digital trends vary hugely from country to country so a good strategy is an adaptable one.
“We made sure that we had different kinds of content that could be leveraged in different ways.”
For Miracle Cushion, Rhomé and her team created a palette of different content for the countries to play with as they thought best: “We made sure that we had different kinds of content that could be leveraged in different ways. In China, for example, the cushion concept already existed, so the country decided to leverage the film in order to build up the emotion and aspirtational aspect of the product. For a country like the UK, it was much more about results, so the focus was really the Lisa Eldridge make-up tutorials that would really explain how the product was made and how it would change a woman’s life. In Germany, they were really happy to have a strong engagement aspect and decided to focus on the Instagram account.”
7. Have fun
Getting close to the consumer with digital means being creative, interactive and playful.
“I really enjoyed seeing new ideas come up every day, it was really rewarding seeing our consumers get involved in the Instagram competition,” Rhomé says. “And ultimately we created a fantastic user experience that I also really enjoyed making: four days on a super set in Paris in the most amazing locations with an actress who really helped us to ensure that she represented a real woman in her everyday life while also capturing the spirit of Lancôme.”
