CANNES: Marketers in the beauty sector may need to rethink some of the fundamentals of their craft, right down to how they name products, if they are to succeed in the voice ecosystem, Antoine Borde, L'Oréal’s global e-commerce acceleration director, has suggested.
“It's going to be a big thing: How do we integrate the fact that voice is becoming a very important factor when it comes to the purchase decision of a consumer?” Borde said at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (For more, read WARC’s exclusive report: The future e-commerce trends catching L'Oréal's eye.)
As a starting point: L'Oréal has sponsored “My Beauty Chat”, an audio offering for Amazon Echo developed by Hearst, the media company.
This content features experts from magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire. Unveiled late last year, the show provides two installments of style tips per day.
Greater challenges await down the road, Borde asserted. For instance, one prospective speedbump is that many customers do not know how to say the name of L'Oréal’s “Maybelline” brand.
“When it comes to voice … how do you pronounce the name?” asked Borde. “We need to understand how people talk … What are they going to tell Alexa? ‘Buy mascara.’ Or, ‘Buy Maybelline.’ Or ‘Maybelline.’ I don't know.”
A similar issue applies when people are typing on a keyboard – and others rarely search for product names on shopping sites, either. These issues might well be replicated, and magnified, with voice.
In reflection of this fact, marketers in the beauty category may have to adjust their preference for “fancy names” – Borde gave the hypothetical example of “Rouge Caress” – when they launch products.
“We not only need to understand what people are going to write [and] search, but now we need to understand what people are going to say to their device,” said Borde.
“People don't even know how to [spell] Maybelline … [Is it] double ‘n’? One ‘n’? An ‘i’? It requires that we rethink the way we write the name of our brands, [and how] you write the product descriptions.”
Against this backdrop, Borde continued, monitoring search entries “allows me to convince [executives] internally how we should change the way we go to market into e-commerce.”
“It's going to be a big thing: How do we integrate the fact that voice is becoming a very important factor when it comes to the purchase decision of a consumer?” Borde said at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (For more, read WARC’s exclusive report: The future e-commerce trends catching L'Oréal's eye.)
As a starting point: L'Oréal has sponsored “My Beauty Chat”, an audio offering for Amazon Echo developed by Hearst, the media company.
This content features experts from magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire. Unveiled late last year, the show provides two installments of style tips per day.
Greater challenges await down the road, Borde asserted. For instance, one prospective speedbump is that many customers do not know how to say the name of L'Oréal’s “Maybelline” brand.
“When it comes to voice … how do you pronounce the name?” asked Borde. “We need to understand how people talk … What are they going to tell Alexa? ‘Buy mascara.’ Or, ‘Buy Maybelline.’ Or ‘Maybelline.’ I don't know.”
A similar issue applies when people are typing on a keyboard – and others rarely search for product names on shopping sites, either. These issues might well be replicated, and magnified, with voice.
In reflection of this fact, marketers in the beauty category may have to adjust their preference for “fancy names” – Borde gave the hypothetical example of “Rouge Caress” – when they launch products.
“We not only need to understand what people are going to write [and] search, but now we need to understand what people are going to say to their device,” said Borde.
“People don't even know how to [spell] Maybelline … [Is it] double ‘n’? One ‘n’? An ‘i’? It requires that we rethink the way we write the name of our brands, [and how] you write the product descriptions.”
Against this backdrop, Borde continued, monitoring search entries “allows me to convince [executives] internally how we should change the way we go to market into e-commerce.”
Sourced from WARC
