#MarketingEventsAwards 2020 highlight: Lancôme heightens brand love through immersive virtual experience

Sweeping gold awards across three categories at this year's Marketing Events Awards is beauty brand Lancôme and its agency Mercury PR. The team came in first for the categories Best Use of Influencers, Best Virtual Event (B2C), and Best Team (Agency). Impressing the judges with its event, the Lancôme Genifique #LiveYourStrength Virtual Flagship Store, the brand and agency also walked away with silver awards for both the Best Digital Integration and Best Pop-up Experience/Environment categories. 

Held in the middle of a pandemic-hit year, the Lancôme Genifique #LiveYourStrength Virtual Flagship Store was a immersive online retail experience that ran from 28 August to 20 September 2020. Targeted at females aged 25 to 45, the experience aimed to not only promote its product Lancôme Advanced Génifique, but to dive deep into the science and ingredients behind it. It also sought to inform, inspire and encourage visitors to discover their inner strength, as well as their skin’s inner strength.

Challenge

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged retail businesses to pivot and to explore new retail and PR/social strategies within the virtual realm.

With a surge of online initiatives and a cluttered online marketplace as a result of the pandemic, the challenge for Lancôme was to devise a PR campaign that could cut through the online noise and engage and resonate with the consumers. This led Lancôme to the exploration of creating an immersive retail online experience. The brand tapped on Mercury PR’s expertise to create Lancôme’s world’s first virtual flagship pop-up store exclusive to Singapore, named Lancôme Advanced Génifique #LiveYourStrength Virtual Flagship.

Aligned with a new initiative from by Lancôme with no playbook or global guidelines to follow, the agency was tasked to develop the campaign from scratch, ranging from website, content, PR to social media.

Strategy

Unlike traditional online stores, the Lancôme Advanced Génifique #LiveYourStrength Virtual Flagship provides an immersive 3D virtual shopping experience, and marries retail-tainment in the online environment. It also provides a virtual space to bring the store up close to users at the comfort of their homes. Additionally, the store looks to take visitors on a riveting journey through five different unique zones to uncover the secrets of the Lancôme Advanced Génifique while encouraging them to discover their skin’s inner strength.

The Lancôme’s world’s first virtual flagship pop-up store was created with the following key objectives in mind:

• Create a visual yet immersive online experience to enhance the engagement of the user, creating high-impact buzz for Lancôme *Génifique with a first ever virtual pop-up in Singapore;
  
  
• The experience should attain wide access and reach to educate and inspire visitors about the efficiency and science behind the Génifique;
  
  
• Given an online initiative, the virtual flagship should drive traffic to the Lancôme e-stores, in the hope for conversion.

Targeting females aged 25 to 45, the campaign ran from 28 August to 20 September 2020. It was conceptualised and executed by Mercury, from development of the website, social campaign to PR management.

The brand and agency looked to create an inclusive campaign that resonates and uplifts the community, with the right tone in the age of COVID-19. Mercury acknowledged that it is essential to focus on messaging that brings people together during times like this. Building on the Lancôme Genifique campaign tagline #LiveYourStrength, the agency approached the influencers campaign in the spirit of uplifting the community, with an inspirational tone, coupled with its theme of communal care and unity that is sure to strike an emotional chord while demonstrating value and humanising the brand in uncertain times.

Execution

The concept proposed featured a façade that mirrors the Lancôme Génifique bottle. Visitors will enter through a “digital elevator” that will take them through the various zones in their Lancôme virtual journey. Within this elevator, the user would be able to see an overview of the five different unique zones of the Lancôme Advanced Génifique.

The zones are:

1. Discover

As visitors step into the virtual flagship, this zone will demonstrate the science behind the Advanced Genifique and delve into the ingredients behind the products and how they come together to strengthen the skin’s microbiome. Visitors can participate in the AR filter and share their photos on social media.

Additionally, Lancôme developed the Lancôme Strength-Finder Personality Test. Building on the idea to create a Strength-Finder Personality Test in discovering visitors’ strength type and learn how to live their strengths, the test piqued curiosity, reflection and action. It also helped visitors to understand how they can harness this strength to live their best self and how their strength brings their youth to life (and skin). Upon receiving the test results, visitors can also download a shareable version to post on their social media channels.

2. Explore

In the second zone, visitors can experience a virtual skin consultation in one selfie with the E-Youth Finder, Lancôme’s first-ever mobile skin diagnosis tool powered by artificial intelligence.

3. Inspire

The third zone features the nation-wide “Find Your Strength” with Lancôme campaign, presenting 100 women who share their personal stories of inner strength and how they live their strengths. The campaign is fronted by local personalities such as Jeanette Aw, Aisyah Aziz, Anita Kapoor, Constance Lau, Rosalyn Lee and Sharon Au.

4. Live

The fourth zone plays host to a series of authentic livestream sessions organised throughout the duration of the virtual pop-up. Highlights included appearances by regional and local celebrities including Asian singer Aaron Kwok, and Jeanette Aw and Rosalyn Lee to host an intimate and informative webcast session, that was open to the public.

Following a successful media preview with maximum media attendance, the Lancôme Advanced Génifique #LiveYourStrength Virtual Flagship was officially launched with a special virtual appearance by singer Kwok live from Hong Kong. The launch was kickstarted with a fun and interactive livestream session with him, which include a Q&A session and a tour of the virtual flagship.

5. Shop

This final zone is modeled after the physical Lancôme store, and showcases the full range of Advanced Genifique products. It also includes features like a personalisation machine with customisable products to mark this first-ever virtual flagship. Visitors can also shop exclusive Génifique skincare sets online with limited time offers at this zone.

Results

The flagship store garnered global attention and was a global sensation, especially in the world of beauty. This initiative has also been made a best practice for the Lancôme global team, which has plans to scale this up to more markets with the support of Mercury PR.

The engagement of the #LiveYourStrength social media posts was generally higher than most of the 100 women’s normal post. There was also high interest in the 100 influencers’ sharing of their road to self-discovery that has connected with the greater community of women in Singapore.

The event secured media coverage of a total PR value of more than SG$4 million and total a follower reach of 5.5 million on social media. There was also increased Lancôme brand and product love that resulted from the campaign.