“We will never use an AI-generated face or body to enhance the product benefit” : L’Oreal’s Chief Marketing & Digital Officer Asmita Dubey

L’Oreal has been bullish on the Indian beauty market. How is it evolving, and how are you tapping into this potential?

We are very bullish and optimistic about India due to its rising middle class, with the country already having a 237 million addressable target, which is rapidly growing. Indian society is also evolving in different areas, whether in terms of growing affluence and gender equality, among other aspects. We are now seeing rising expertise in terms of routines and ingredients in the Indian market, as consumers are using a more nuanced language for beauty due to better accessibility fuelled by digital platforms. While premiumisation happening, there is also a focus on value, as the market is experiencing an overall expansion in breadth.

For beauty consumers, almost four out of five of their top touchpoints today are digital. So this is a market where we are innovating in different areas. If you talk of driving awareness, and you look at the rise of adoption of connected TVs...it is actually allowing consumers to look at all kinds of content, especially vernacular content, driving more engagement. At the same time, social commerce is growing in the country, and WhatsApp is huge in India. This is unique to markets like India and Brazil. And then there is shoppable content. There’s a rise in quick commerce. All these areas are evolving. At the same time, we are tapping into India’s big open innovation ecosystem and have begun working with a couple of Indian start-ups.

How are AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI reshaping your strategies globally? Are you launching something specific for the Indian market?

AI is disrupting the consumer journey as well as the marketing value chain. We are fully committed to social-first brand-building strategies. We work with over 70,000 influencers and leverage AI to offer consumers more immersive experiences. At a time when consumers are overwhelmed with the growing number of choices. L’Oreal Paris has launched an Agentic AI-powered personal beauty assistant offering all the product knowledge in a conversational format. The L’Oreal Paris Beauty Genius answers all the consumers’ queries, giving them personal diagnosis and recommendations. Already nearly 400,000 such conversations have taken place on our US site. It enables  us to deepen engagement with consumers, increase the average basket size and even achieve higher conversion rates. We are also partnering with Meta to bring the Beauty Genius onto WhatsApp. While we are still working out the details, we are considering  launching it in India.

 How is AI reshaping consumer purchase behaviour, and what innovations are you bringing in that space?

We are seeing changes in consumers’ purchase behaviour. Noli (“No one like I”) is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered multi-brand marketplace startup, founded and backed by L’Oréal Groupe, which is reinventing how people discover and shop for beauty. Noli is leveraging L’Oréal Groupe’s unparalleled beauty tech leadership, century-long beauty expertise , and its extensive knowledge of beauty science and consumer insights. It acts as an AI Beauty Matchmaker that cuts through the noise. Using powerful AI diagnostics and tools built from over 1 million skin data points and the analysis of thousands of product formulations, Noli decodes each user’s beauty profile and matches them with product recommendations delivered to their doorstep. Building on their joint efforts with NVIDIA, Noli unveils the AI Refinery, in collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture, built with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and available on Microsoft Azure.

There are growing calls for setting up ethical and responsible frameworks for AI. What’s your view?

We have been developing a particular expertise with AI. We have seven principles that govern whatever AI products we put on the market to ensure trustworthiness. They should have human oversight. They should be fairn, to ensure there is inclusivity and representation. There should be transparency, more than anything. As we create all this content featuring ingredients, formulae, products, backgrounds, back shots or new codes of beauty and how beauty could be. But we will never use an AI-generated face, body, hair or skin to enhance the product’s benefit. We ensure we adhere to all the guidelines on responsible media and advertising, including  influencer marketing. We are a global beauty company, the fourth largest advertiser in the world, with a portfolio of 37 brands. We are committed to using new technologies responsibly.

Several markets worldwide are witnessing a slowdown and muted consumer sentiment. How is digitalisation helping you shape your marketing strategies during these volatile times?

There is a mixed consumer confidence index across the world for various reasons. On the one hand, the market is experiencing minimisation, and on the other hand, the value remains a core driver across price points. Therefore, we bring products and brands offering different price propositions. We have brands for all age groups, all social demographics, all categories, and we do beauty for everybody

In this scenario, digitalisation democratises  access to beauty and allows for personalisation. It also allows us to be locally relevant and tune with the cultural and social language that resonates with the audience. So technology allows for the dissemination of culture and is also creating new cultures. Like what we see with the short video culture led by TikTok and Reels or the influencer culture. This enables us to engage with more people in more relevant and more personalised ways. Our goal is to focus on unparalleled consumer engagement using all these levers.