L'Oréal: make advertising 'less interruptive' to beat ad blockers

22-Jun-2016 - Last updated on 22-Jun-2016 at 14:42 GMT

L’Oréal’s chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet has spoken of the need to create branded experiences rather than traditional adverts when trying to beat the rise of ad blockers.

Speaking to the Financial Times, the beauty industry expert said diversifying a brand’s digital offering is increasingly crucial to keeping consumers engaged.

“This is really about creating greater content and experiences, greater formats for our consumers — especially in an age where ad-blocking is going mainstream,” she said.

“The whole thing that ad-blocking is pointing to is classical advertising fatigue,” she continued. “We need to reinvent the experience and we need to make it less interruptive, more immersive, more rewarding, more personalised.”

Authentic voice

L’Oréal has long led the wider industry’s efforts in the digital sphere, and was typically ahead of the game when it came to realising consumers demand an authentic brand voice online.

The company has focused its efforts on recruiting vloggers across YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest as brand ambassadors, and tapping into millennial social media trends as they emerge - its recent Snapchat lens offering a key example.

“This is really a reinvention of marketing models in an age of ad-blocking and an age of selfies and influencers,” Rochet confirmed to the Financial Times. “That is a huge shift.”

Unbranded: the next frontier?

In what appears to be an experiment in taking the ‘authentic brand voice’ to its extreme, the global cosmetics giant has even launched a completely unbranded sharing platform for beauty-related lifestyle content, which deliberately stays away from any explicit brand endorsement.

"We've always said our job is to launch brands and products, but also to promote and endorse the industry of beauty. It's an industry people relate to, and we are lucky that it's so inspiring and engaging," An Verhulst-Santos, president of the L'Oreal professional products division, told AdAge.com.

It’s a bold step into unbranded content, suggesting L’Oréal’s confidence that its brand identity has now reached a level where it can forego traditional B2C advertising strategies online.