Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2021 | |

Malaysia’s First Ever 12-Hour Virtual Beauty Festival

Advertiser: L’Oreal Malaysia
Brand: L’Oreal Luxury
Creative Agency: IDOTYOU
Credits: -

23_BRONZE_OC2_VIRTUALBEAUTYFESTIVAL REC

Objective & Challenge
Prior to the pandemic, more than 95% sales of luxe brands stemmed from offline, but lockdown rules made them untenable and an ordinary digital activation would not excite the luxe shoppers in the same way. We need a breakthrough formula to disrupt the typical mode of live streaming.

Insight & Strategy
Luxe shoppers love beauty events, the joy of browsing through attractive deals, delightful packaging and interacting with experts. Not forgetting the attentive service and personalised consultation, which usually lead to higher impulse purchases and basket value. However, COVID19 has disrupted the joy. While the retail joy shifted from offline to online, we wanted to go further and disrupt the ordinary mode of live streaming which have developed over the COVID19 year. It was a challenge to bring all 8 luxe brands under 1 virtual festival, but the biggest challenge is to make this 12hour virtual festival interesting for people to tune in, to engage with the brands and to ultimately buy the product during the festival. We creatively tied in Facebook live streaming and messenger capabilities to simulate a physical event with impeccable customer service, digitally. An exceptional virtual beauty experience was delivered, featuring celebrities and influencers hosting giveaways and flash sales. We deployed an end to end social commerce and shopper engagement platform within the messenger that allow shoppers to use the brand’s dedicated hashtag to trigger a private conversation on messenger. The customer can opt for self shopping or to interact with a real life beauty advisor personally, place orders and make payment all within the chat. This sped up the conversion process while the purchase intent is high, driven by the live excitements simulated after a physical event. The virtual event offered shoppers curated content mirroring a physical event, in the comfort of their own home while mix modelling of bot and real life advisors gave the assisted joy of physical shopping.

Execution
To bring 8 brands to Facebook live all within 12 hours, audience precision was key to ensure that the awareness of the event is widely spread to the targeted luxe audience. To ensure we were able to reach and recruit high interest audience, we deployed a CRM and CRM LookaLike audience strategy, which have contributed to higher attendance and conversion rate. Other channel consisting of PR content and print titles were also used to boost event awareness beyond Facebook platform. Pre event Activation
• To build the excitement of the festival, we consolidated the voice of all brands into one event hub page 10 days prior to the actual event
• We increased signups to individual brand pages by highlighting the limited time promotions and exciting lineups of KOLs, giveaways, tips, and tutorials during their respective brand show.
• To collected leads for each brand via messenger ads
• Boost PR content and use offline print titles to extend the reach beyond the Facebook platform Event Day
• Drive live stream views via video ads 30 minutes prior to brand’s live session
• Engage audience with flash sales and prizes to stay through the session
• High persuasive content such as crash test, efficacy proof, live demo and consultation are included to deepen brand engagement and drive instant conversion
• Activated social commerce triggering a personalized conversation via Messenger. Customers could then interact with a beauty advisor for a one on one consultation, place orders and follow guided assistance to make payment. Post Event Retargeting
• Following the event, we deployed different remarketing strategies for purchased users and cart abandoner to drive the effectiveness on conversion.

Effectiveness
The first ever 12 hour virtual beauty festival achieved an overwhelming response amidst the pandemic. It has made a feature in Forbes.com and listed as Facebook Business Case Study: Integration of social commerce. Strategic Business Achievement One month’s worth of online sales in 24 hours 5x omni customer penetration vs. YAGO +95% sell out weekoverweek 3x uplift of transactions vs. daily average 6x conversion rate higher than legacy channel Total leads generated at 94% above set target Media achievement: Activated over 15,000 chats Reached 2.6 million people 47,000 live video views 85 times higher engagement (4.28%) vs. global beauty industry standard (0.05%) 12% post engagement rate “Experimenting with new sales formats always requires meticulous planning and planning an allday virtual beauty festival with multiple brands was an incredibly ambitious effort. Thanks to our partners and agencies, we were able to host an outstanding live event that deepened our engagement with our audience and boosted sales. It was a great success!” Eda Lim, Head of Digital and eCommerce, L’Oreal Luxury Malaysia.