Best Integrated Campaign

To maximise SkinCeuticals’ exposure and sales revenue and its pillar Antioxidant Serums in Hainan, L’Oréal Travel Retail Asia Pacific and the medical skincare brand delivered a one-month Chinese New Year campaign from late January 2021. The campaign with China Duty Free Group was a pioneering and strategic online-to-offline (O+O) partnership using beauty tech to create a seamless customer journey. The journey began with the brand’s first Chinese New Year-themed store takeover that embraced SkinCeuticals at CDFG stores, with a prominent festive design to attract beauty consumers. Key elements included a culturally relevant in-store ‘retailtainment’ installation – an Augmented Reality photo booth with a social media sharing feature to maximise the campaign’s online exposure. This was aligned with an online hashtag campaign on Mafengwo, the leading social media platform for travellers, where influencers and bloggers were invited to share their best travel moments and beauty tips using a specific hashtag.

In a breakthrough, the campaign also featured a partnership with Alibaba Group’s mobile and online payment platform Alipay. Using its database, the brand could precisely target the appropriate audience based on their shopping habits and records of previous beauty product purchases. The brand also executed its first partnership with Cosmose, a new AI tracking tool to capture real to-store traffic. This enabled the brand to identify the right audience pre-store visit, build campaign awareness, drive foot traffic, and measure the offline conversion to the point of sale. There were multiple touchpoints throughout this consumer journey, from online to store, encouraging engagement and spend. The integrated campaign resulted in sales growth of over +500% and the crossover with Mafengwo recorded total impressions of 20 million, with over 9,000 store visits connected to the campaign, said the partners. According to Cosmose, over 393,000 online users were exposed to the campaign via leading platforms such as Tencent News and Baidu. Online users successfully converted into customers in the store, with Alipay coupon redemption also at a high level. The installation of engaging ‘retailtainment’ in the stores alongside social media sharing offers many lessons for other markets, noted the brand owner.