Creative campaigns from L’Oréal Paris, Swimsuits for All and Tea Forté

L’Oréal Paris

Situation
L’Oreal Paris wanted to bring its brand to virtual worlds and reach educated, brand-savvy women in this space. “The pro­file of Second Life users fit the profile of L’Oreal customers,” says Nic Mitham, CEO of K Zero Ltd. “And, avatar customi­zations meant there was incum­bent demand for cosmetics.”

Approach
L’Oreal Paris enlisted K Zero Ltd, a Second Life consultancy firm, to help create products for virtual worlds. The company launched make-up skins for Sec­ond Life avatars to “wear” that it gave away for free in Second Life between December 2007 and February 2008. Products including Like it Scarlett, Vin­tage Glamour, Perfectly Pastel and Plum Perfect were stocked in the stores of existing Second Life retailers and were made available to avatars.

“In the real world, L’Oreal typically sells cosmetics in third-party stores, so we partnered with existing third-party stores in the virtual world,” Mitham says.

Results
On average, 2,428 products were taken each week. Second Life residents took more than 34,000 products during the three-month campaign. The most popular skin was Vintage Glamour, with 27.2% of the transactions.
-Dianna Dilworth

Swimsuits for All

Approach: E-tailer Swimsuits for All began using eWayDirect’s Web site re-engagement e-mail tool in October to automatically communicate with site visitors. Messages include e-mails to new visitors as soon as they sign up on the site and personalized e-mail to returning customers within 20 minutes of them leav­ing the site without purchasing.

Results: Sales increased more than 4 times over sales achieved from the traditional e-mail strategy among new visitors, and 7.3 to 10 times for returning shoppers.
-Lauren Bell

Tea Forté
Approach: Massachusetts-based luxury multichannel tea retailer Tea Forté wanted to test a new online product launch in September, using Knotice’s Concentri plat­form for e-mail campaigns. One test group was never shown the new product, while a second was shown it in the e-mail and a third was shown the product after vis­iting the Tea Forté site.

Results: The second group converted 17.2% higher than the control group, while the third converted 24.3% less.
-Bryan Yurcan

PRIVATEVIEW
John Munyan
Creative director, Duncan/Channon

I must admit, when I wrack my brain for the ideal place to reach beauty product consum­ers, Second Life doesn’t exactly spring to mind. That said, the folks at L’Oreal have done a good job creating an engaging virtual experience that has an almost surreal Alice in Wonderland quality — as if virtual experi­ences weren’t surreal enough on their own. There’s a giant handbag that just begs to be explored and oversized products that are a great way to get a look at L’Oreal’s offerings.

The Swimsuits for All e-mail seems to be nothing more than an electronic version of the fly­ers I find on my car windshield. With a new piece of “Web site re-engagement” technol­ogy affording the e-retailer the chance to reach out to recent shoppers who passed on buying the first time, the creative misses its chance to add something meaningful to the sell. Instead, it leans entirely on the offer. This reads more like a catalog page than a crafted piece of commu­nication. A visual point of view and a headline extending an invitation to take a second look might have done the trick.

As I am a confirmed cheap­skate, the Tea Forté e-mail gave me a nice little chuckle. Who wouldn’t want to save thousands on a spa getaway? The offer is funny without feel­ing too gimmicky, and it nicely conveys the tea’s benefit to boot. The site also does a good job of visually presenting the compa­ny’s line of products. The clean aesthetic and appealing photog­raphy give me a real sense of what this brand is all about.