The power of proprietary data in AI

Estée Lauder – the company which owns beauty brands including Clinique, M.A.C and The Ordinary among many others – is doubling down on the ‘math and magic’ of creativity as it embraces the power of data and artificial intelligence to level up its consumer connections.

Why it matters

Estée Lauder owns iconic beauty brands across a spectrum of ages, styles and markets. As the use of artificial intelligence becomes more common in the marketing industry, the company is exploring real life applications to add value to its brands and connect with shoppers.

The power of proprietary data in AI 

“We have all of our ads, all of our packaging, all of our fonts and creative that we’ve built up over 75 years. By putting them into a giant AI system, you can come up with all new creative just based on your own IP,” said Jane Lauder, EVP – Enterprise Marketing and Chief Data Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies at the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity recently. 

“For me, it’s about those areas of strength in our company – product and creativity – and how we can generate completely new ways of thinking about them.”

Take a brand-centric approach

Lauder was clear that marketers need to ensure that their use cases for artificial intelligence make sense to consumers and their own brand’s DNA.

“There’s this feeling that we have to jump into every technology… What we’ve said is that you need to stop and think: every brand and every consumer interaction needs to start from what’s true about your company. When you look to the future, always make sure that you’re staying true to your brand heritage and North Star, then figure out how to use the technologies to drive that even more,” Lauder said. 

Key takeaways

• Having a strong backbone of proprietary data and having the right people to look at the data and use it in the right way is a big competitive advantage in the world of artificial intelligence, especially for creative applications and personalisation. 
• It’s essential that brands take the time to ensure they are compliant from a legal perspective, including codes of conduct for employees. 
• Given that over 80% of consumers expect companies to have more personalised products and communications, digital transformation will play an important role in making that happen.

^{[Image: Joshua Sortino from Unsplash]}