Whilst not an official sponsor, 11 January saw L’Oreal activative around the Golden Globes via a real-time marketing initiative that transformed the Golden Globes red carpet into a shoppable social commerce platform.
For the French cosmetic and beauty giant, the Golden Globes is something akin to the Super Bowl and it leveraged social media fever around the stars’ ‘looks’ on the red carpet into a brand-led purchasing platform.
Those fans following the Golden Globes Awards ceremony social chatter on Twitter could tap into a new social stream: a L’Oreal branded GIF recreating each star’s fashion look.
Thus, when trend-setting fashion superstars like Julianne Moore graced the red carpet and social platforms burned hot discussing her ensemble, L’Oreal re-created her make-up look in real-time through a retail-relevant channel.
The Paris-head-quartered beauty brand set up a Golden Globe’s digital hub – which it describes as a ‘shoppable social commerce centre’ – from a New York multimedia studio.
It was staffed by a blended social team from both L’Oreal Paris and agency R/GA working in harness with a set of eight style influencers and five models.
These industry influencers included The Man Repeller (who also recently featured in the Mercedes-Benz fashion activation (see previous case study), Melisa Michelle, Sam Cannon and Romain Laurent.
These experts worked with the social team and used a 360-degree camera to shoot film recreating the makeup looks of the leading fashion celebrities as they walked down the red carpet.
These films ran in both French,
and English language versions.
These videos were transformed into GIFs and uploaded to L’Oreal’s Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr pages.
Each of these posts also included e-commerce links to ‘shop the looks’.
The initiative was further supported via paid ads on Facebook to drive viewers to Tumblr and purchased promoted tweets.
This socially-led strand also supported and synched with new TV ads aired by L’Oreal during the program which promoted 10 key products (including Infallible makeup and the Preference and Excellence hair product ranges).
At the end of the red carpet phase of the Golden Globes, the expert of social panel then live tweeted and commented about the awards show itself.
L’Oreal also planned its 2015 Golden Globe’s initiative with data from its 2014 awards show campaign which saw it launch its Tumblr page with the #LOrealParisLive campaign.
An activation that the brand claims generated 21.8 million impressions and 234,000 engagements.
The approach also ties in with other aspects of L’Oreal’s ongoing marketing, such as its make-up consumer-created video tutorial ‘The Brush Contest’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2bBEBCDtK4
Comment
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes Awards don’t have traditional sponsorship deals or classic commercial partners and so offer plenty of opportunity for ambush (although there are brand alliances involved with aspects of the such – such as its official post ceremony parties and the like).
The objective of this L’Oreal real-time campaign creating shoppable social content on-the-go was to build around certain key brand pillars – such as a specific lipstick shade and line).
Like adidas’ social strategy at last summer’s World Cup, L’Oreal also pre-produced a core set of content that it could tweak into real-time work.
‘We have a huge amount of work that we’ve already done, but our primary thing is that we want to be flexible and capture those special moments throughout the night,” explains R/GA creative director Megan Trinidad.
This is an interesting twist on the standard social media war room so familiar to major sports events such as the World Cup and the Super Bowl.
Indeed, the Golden Globes is the Super Bowl for fashion and its red carpet is a key moment for the ‘beauty’’ business.
This tactic not only responds to events within the property, but also uses experts and brand-staff to show fans how to re-create retailable looks based on the outfits of key stars.
Links
L’Oreal Website
http://www.loreal.com/
L’Oreal Tumblr
http://lorealparisusa.tumblr.com/
L’Oreal Twitter
https://twitter.com/loreal
#LOrealParisLive
L’Oreal Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/LOrealParis?brandloc=DISABLE
L’Oreal YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/LOrealParis
Golden Globes Website
http://www.goldenglobes.com/
