Five L'Oréal brands and their creative agencies tried out the YouTube experience, and it was certainly "worth it". Amor Amor by Cacharel and Marcel, L'Oréal Paris and McCann, Ultra Doux de Garnier and Publicis Conseil, La Roche Posay and BETC, and Roger & Gallet and Dan agreed to be part of a new and exciting challenge: the first European YouTube Lab!
75% of French Internet users spend their time watching videos, and YouTube has become the go-to destination for this audience in its perpetual quest for video content. But how can brands and agencies create videos that address these new habits? With a diverse range of brands and target groups, L'Oréal agreed to try the YouTube Lab experience, with the aim of exploring new ways to express itself in a more conversational way with its consumers.
This first YouTube Lab challenged five L'Oréal brands and their creative agencies with using these new ways to communicate through a "test and learn" approach. Each team of brand and creative agency had to follow specific instructions to reach its target. The YouTube channels Le Meufisme, Golden Moustache, Amaury et Quentin, Lolywood and FNU were assigned to the teams as advisors to ensure that they used the most appropriate YouTube language.
The challenge? Create a video in three days, after only 15 days of intensive brainstorming. Compared to standard industry practices, this represented a very short time, which forced the teams to adopt an agile approach and explore new creative routes. This content was then circulated for one week in a pre-roll TrueView to assess its performance using Brand Lift survey metrics.
The result? Creative and engaging videos, in affinity with the target audience. Whether teenage girls, mothers or fashion-conscious city women, the various L’Oréal brands were able to play with the YouTube language and codes in order to engage with their audience.
Different creative experiences, with great performance:
- 800,000 views on average per video
- 1 min 30 sec average engagement with the brand
- +10% ad recall (vs +5% industry average)
- +6% brand preference (vs +2% industry average)
Roger & Gallet moved away from its usual image by showing a modern yet slightly quirky Empress. With Cacharel and its Amor Amor, the brand gave its perfume a sense of humour, which - together with Amor Amor - is invaluable for a successful date. Ultra Doux de Garnier took a gentle, family approach, launching a web series showing tenderness through love and care. La Roche-Posay created several variants of the "Save your skin" campaign, using Carlton the Dalmatian as a mascot. Finally, L’Oréal Paris presented "The Hair Battle", where two talented hair stylists compete against each other to the extreme. These campaigns formed the basis for web series able to captivate audiences over the long term, one episode at a time.
A combination of agility, creativity and performance: quite a successful outcome for the first YouTube Lab with the L'Oréal Group.
