Vlogging has risen to prominence over recent years as a dominant driving force within beauty marketing, and brands have generally struggled to wrestle control of the medium from non-professional content producers.
These content producers control 97% of conversations around beauty and host 10 times more video content on YouTube than beauty brands, according to Pixability, with Michelle Phan, Zoella and Bethany Mota leading in terms of views (Phan having surpassed the billion mark).
Through L’Oreal’s launch of the vlogging school with YouTube, the brand clearly hopes to gain an edge within vlogging, and demonstrates that brands have started to look outside the box when it comes to content.
Double-edged opportunity
According to WWD, the beauty school will be launched in France this summer, offering 10 vloggers the chance of a six month training scheme, which will educate the aspiring content producers in a range of skills from video recording to audience development.
Once fully active on YouTube, these 10 vloggers will add to L’Oréal’s brand visibility within video content sphere; however, that’s not the only branding opportunity the project offers the cosmetics multinational.
L’Oreal will also be hosting a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the whole process on its YouTube channel, tapping into the fellow dominant trend of reality lifestyle vlogs which enjoy similar popularity on the video-hosting site.
Authenticity
By training genuine aspiring vloggers, L’Oréal no doubt hopes to build up a sense of authenticity - an essential quality to successful vlog content, and the element brands have traditionally failed to capture.
Indeed, a recent survey carried out by Variety found US teens prefer “YouTube stars’ more candid sense of humor, lack of filter and risk-taking spirit”, as opposed to celebrity or branded content.
It follows on from the recent launch of L’Oreal’s ‘unbranded content hub’ website, Fab Beauty, which hosts beauty-related lifestyle content in a blog format.
The site avoids any explicit brand endorsement, and instead attempts to attract key beauty influencers and so generate consumer engagement with beauty more broadly, according to the company.