L'oréal Social Media Analysis

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3 Theoretical Choices

This chapter is focused firstly on theoretical market communication models in general. Hereafter, there will be touched upon how L’Oréal makes and has made use of endorsers, and the way how using celebrities and social influencers as endorsers affects L’Oréal’s target groups.

3.1 Market Communication Models

The headway of new media and digital communication required changes in marketing. This leads the marketing managers to the need to adapt new tools to reach their customers in the most effective way possible. One of the biggest advantage offered by digitalization is the two-way communication (Fill, 2013). It assumes that the sender and messenger change roles through the conversation, meaning that the customers have the opportunity to give feedback to the companies about their products and services.

One of the models used in digital marketing communication is Fill’s (2009) Interactional Model of Communication. This model is based on several actors and tools influencing different target audiences. Moreover, it provides two-way communication to the companies, and the opportunity to personalize their marketing. Fill’s model is based on four key elements - the different types of sources, the target audience, the opinion leaders and the opinion formers. The source of information can be electronic, personal or even the mass media. Yet, it is important to distinguish the opinion leaders and the opinion formers. Opinion formers are experts in the field, for example because of their job or earlier experience. Conversely, opinion leaders are people, who can influence the target customers of a product or a service. They influence the target groups not particularly through a certain expertise, but because of their fame (Fill, 2013). Celebrities are often used as opinion leaders in marketing campaigns due to the reason of being well-known. Using celebrities and spokespersons is a common way to build the credibility of an advertised product. Another advantage of celebrity spokespersons is that they can motivate the customers to choose the product advertised by them, instead of the product of the competition (Fill, 2013).

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Figure 1. Fill’s Interactional Model of Communication (2009).

In terms of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann, 1983), which studies persuasion patterns in advertising based on the level of involvement of the target group, using celebrity endorsement or social influencers as opinion leaders is especially useful for messages that might be received via the peripheral route. This way an individual’s attitude will not change as a result of personally considering pros and cons of the issue, but because the message is associated with positive or negative cues (Petty et al., 1983). When a message is sent with the help of a celebrity endorsers, the positive cues that are associated with that celebrity or influencer could change the attitude one has towards that message, product or brand. There will be more elaborated on the effects that the use of celebrity endorsement has on target audiences in section 3.3, but first examples will be provided on how L’Oréal puts this celebrity endorsement strategy into practice.

3.2 How L’Oréal Communicates

Historically, L’Oréal has used opinion leaders who are celebrities and actresses. But the company is more and more reliant on the new strategy of influencer marketing. In categories, such as fashion and beauty, marketers have gone all in for the influencer marketing campaigns and are heavily dependent on so-called “influencers” to help drive brand mentions, awareness, positive perception and even sales (Andrew Stephen, 2017). Influencer marketing is defined by Global Yodel (2016) as “simply the action of promoting and selling products or services through people (influencers) who have the capacity to have an effect on the character of a brand”. The increasing popularity and importance of influencer marketing can be said to result from the growing consumer trend of avoiding the more traditional advertising forms. Basically, companies need to make use of social media influencer as opinion leaders to still reach their target groups, especially in terms of the younger generation.[pic 4]

Moreover, marketers have been encouraged by the increasing competition for consumer consciousness and new product proliferation to use attention-creating media stars to assist product marketing (Erdogan, 1999). They are looking for ways to leverage the authenticity included in the connections of influencers and their followers on social media. L’Oréal with its large mass-market brands, makes increasingly use of this shift from macro-influencers to micro-influencers. In the UK, for example, the company created a five-member “beauty squad” of ethnically diverse beauty bloggers for their flagship L’Oréal Paris brand, showing the brands latest products, creating engaging content and attending key beauty events, such as the Paris Fashion week. According to Adrien Koskas, they not only helped the beauty brand reach new online audiences but also shaped the company’s thinking around how to make its products, and its message, more inclusive (Caffyn, 2017).

Furthermore, the beauty brand uses the influencer potential by experimenting with using everyday influencers who actively push the company’s new brands on different social channels such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube (Heine, 2017). Moreover, L’Oréal has been leading the way in getting products featured in YouTube videos, according to Cosmetics Design (McDougall, 2013). The brand achieved great success by gifting its products to top beauty vloggers and by placing ads within their videos (BJ Kito, 2014). These are only a few examples of how L’Oréal has been changing the face of cosmetics marketing by increasing their marketing strategy towards online and especially influencer marketing. Erdogan (1999) states, that “from a marketing communicationperspective, it is vital that firm design strategies that help underpin competitive differential advantage for a firm's products or services.”. We will elaborate on social media marketing touching upon celebrity endorsement with special focus on influencer marketing and how L’Oréal makes usage of it as well as illustrate the company’s success with it.[pic 5]

3.3 How This Affects its Target Groups

Reviewing previous research into the effects of (celebrity) endorsement by brands shows that it is important to make a clear distinction

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