Ch -7 Business Marketing

The culture and development of L'Oreal are based on creativity and  sense of beauty. The marketing teams live out these values on an everyday basis, a definite strength of the group. L'Oreal has creativity in its DNA. The marketing teams are at the heart of the process, at the interface between all the group’s units of business. Their mission is to make consumers the world over aware of products designed to meet their needs and to be one step ahead of trends in order to transform them into sources of beauty and well-being. They are structured into two main tracks within the group: operational marketing and marketing development.Joining the multicultural marketing teams means not only participating in the development and promotion of products worldwide but also working in an ultra-competitive sector that changes rapidly, a sector that sets the trends of the future. L'Oreal brands are aimed at a wide range of consumers and lifestyles, from mass distribution channels and modern beauty stores, to professional salons, and all the way to luxury boutiques in various countries. They continue to change the world’s market where the competition is very stiff and demanding. Lastly, the group is constantly marketing new products and frequently renovating its brands.

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Ch - 11 Developing and Managing Products

 For L'Oreal being responsible means controlling the manufacture of its products. By choosing a largely integrated industrial model, the group does not only guarantee the overall quality of its products; it can also be certain that its ethical, environmental and corporate principles are complied with. The group’s industrial production is organised regionally with 40 plants established on all continents. The industrial organisation is increasingly local and closer to the markets. In 2010 L'Oreal opened a plant in Kaluga, Russia and in 2011 launched three building sites in Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt.

The main mission of the manufacturing teams is to provide the business divisions, which are their internal customers, with high-quality products within the required timelines and at the agreed price under the best possible conditions of safety. To support the group’s strategy of international expansion they are also responsible for developing, managing and optimising the group’s industrial resources.

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

L'Oreal, the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company, was founded in 1907 by the French chemist, Eugene Sculler. After a little over a century of steady growth, L'Oreal has jumped from being a small family business to become the world’s leader in the cosmetics industry. Today, the L'Oreal group has regions in more than 150 countries in the world that are home to 283 branches, more than 100 agents, 50,491 employees, 42 factories, and more than 500 high-quality and popular brands of cosmetics. Their "global or nothing" strategy allows L'Oreal to take market segmenting even further by custom developing and marketing products to meet the specific demands of any given country or region.Loreal's Segmenting and Targeting Markets

    In order to clarify different product positioning in Asia, L'Oreal decided to move from “the open-shelf brand” in Europe up to “the top international brand” in Asia. In Asian countries, L'Oréal set up their counters in upscale department stores according to the Asia specific marketing channel strategy. However, this “accessible luxury brand” strategy did not meet the levels of success they anticipated. The reason for this is that the image of the texture or packaging of their products failed to reflect the luxury image that are so important to marketing in Asia. They failed to understand the significance of the fact that texture and packaging in Asia is more delicate than the required standard in Europe. L'Oréal must prove that the quality of their product shows "significant improvement" if they are to obtain market recognition while moving up their prices in the Asian markets.

 In 2003, L'Oréal created a new line of teeth whitening products in order to open up Japanese and Asian markets. Unlike those products made for the U.S. and Europe, the flavor of the creams and gels sold in Asia have a more oily texture and a more intense flavor. In order to meet the expectations of consumers in Asia, they are also more delicately designed and packaged. 

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

In a world that is constantly changing, Communication teams play a key role. Their mission is to increase awareness, ensure long-term reputation and build up the image of the L’Oréal group and its brands.

Nowadays a brand or a group’s reputation accounts for 75% of its value and persuasion and influence are becoming ever-more decisive in buying. The challenge for brands is therefore to have effective communications that will make them stand out in a saturated environment.

Moreover, with the ever-greater number of information sources and channels, media relations, public relations and special events are now only one aspect of working in communication for L’Oréal. The trend is towards multi-channel strategies that include communication 2.0/social media and multi-targets (journalists, bloggers, influencers, celebrities, consumers, the scientific community, employees and other influencers) who use the entire range of communications tools, partnerships, events, sponsorship, media relations, CSR, crisis management, public affairs, etc. to increase awareness of the group and its brands.

Ch. 10- Product Concepts

                                   
                            

For L’Oréal, science and beauty products are a combination of expertise and sensitivity. The fields of research and innovation are not purely creative but also based on an understanding of customer needs and a view of the cosmetics market now and in the future.

L’Oréal’s research and innovation teams constitute a multicultural community that includes a large number of disciplines (over thirty specializations) in every branch of science and this trend is set to grow in the future. These teams are driven by a shared enthusiasm: inventing and perfecting innovative high-performing cosmetics, contributing to the well-being of men and women all over the world. They achieve this by forever exceeding the boundaries of life- and materials-sciences without ever losing sight of what their customers want.

L’Oréal’s Research and Innovation is divided into 4 main branches: advanced research(developing knowledge in the major scientific fields related to L’Oréal’s business and the creation of predictive evaluation models), applied research (creating formulae and developing new product concepts), development (developing new formulae for providing the brands with safe, innovatory products) and support functions (regulatory affairs, patents, customer surveys, etc.).

ADVANCED RESEARCH

Advanced Research teams create and develop performing and sustainable actives. By feeding the group métiers with new products, their work allows L’Oréal to take up the challenges of innovation and sustainable development.

L’Oréal researchers are looking for:

• Improving their knowledge in many scientific fields (biology, biotechnology, biophysics, chemistry, physics, physical chemistry, modeling…)
• Being open to the world through what we call “open innovation”
• Creating from upstream new models for evaluation of the actives safety and performance, by using very varied tools and methods (from numeric to reconstructed skin)

APPLIED RESEARCH

L’Oréal Applied Research teams create the prototype formulas of the actives stemmed from the Advanced Research. They also select the formulas that lead to new cosmetic properties or improve those already existing. Responsible for the right technology transfer with the Advanced Research, they study the behavior of the ingredients stemmed from the “local” research or suggested by the group’s suppliers, by approaching them as “product concepts”. After a complete evaluation, they can then hand over to the development teams the job.

DEVELOPMENT

Development teams work out new formulas and make sure that the best performing products will be available for the markets in the best safety conditions for both consumers and the environment. They provide the brands with a constant stream of innovative products and make for them recommendations for use based on the regulatory specificities of the different countries where the group is established.

SUPPORT FUNCTIONS

They include:

• Analytical evaluation, safety and global efficiency evaluation of raw materials and formulas
• Knowledge of the different regulations for the product validation and communication and the establishment of regulatory records.
• Industrial protection of the discoveries made within the group
• Resources management (projects, teams, budgets…)
• Consumer insights

L'Oreal Ch. 17- Personal Selling and Sales Management

L’Oréal’s expertise in sales and distribution is 
recognised throughout the world. The sales teams are enthusiastic, open-minded and play a key part in the 
growth and success of the group’s brands.

Conquering new international markets is currently at the heart of L’Oréal’s ambitions. The group is a market leader present in all the distribution circuits and possesses unique expertise in terms of channels and retail outlets. Joining L’Oréal sales teams means using your energy and persuasive capacities to serve customer satisfaction and discovering a working environment that offers an abundance of career routes and opportunities.

Sales covers several vocations. It requires a certain customer expertise in order to represent L’Oréal to distributors, develop customer plans and manage negotiations with our partners. It includes a strategic aspect, drawing up brand strategies and sales strategies based on the results of consumer and customer surveys. Sales is also a function in which leadership is essential to encourage excellence in sales teams, establish the best possible interaction with the other group departments and develop employee talents. Lastly it is oriented towards performance by achieving sales objectives, developing market share and reinforcing the group’s brand image in the different distribution channels.

Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

L'Oreal is the seventh biggest U.S. advertiser, with more than $2.3 billion in spending according to the Ad Age Datacenter. Interpublic's  UMcurrently handles TV and print buying.

The move would appear to open an opportunity for WPP to significantly expand what has long been a relatively small business with the third largest global advertiser. WPP's GroupM has been making gains with L'Oreal Group globally on the media side, with the holding company having already picked up business with the beauty giant in the Nordic region, U.K., Ireland, Southeast Asia, Canada, China, Germany and Latin America in recent years.

Prior to joining L'Oreal last October, Ms. Karp McHugh had been with Colgate since 2011 and had a 20-year career at WPP agencies, most recently GroupM, where she led the Unilever account at Mindshare and helped develop a training program for that agency and sibling Maxus At Colgate, she worked with WPP agencies, which during her watch were merged into the Colgate-specific Red fuze combining people from Y&R, Wunderman, VML MEC and GHG