Always-on online community fuels consumer-centric insights for L'Oréal

InSites Consulting became L’Oréal’s top-scoring agency in 2019 by immersing its teams into the lives of 2,000 Hong Kong consumers

The challenge

With 26 brands operating in several channels, cosmetics and beauty company L’Oréal Hong Kong wanted to get closer to their Hong Kong consumers. This challenged the team to introduce a research set-up that could cater for different languages, and diverse perspectives and values.

Our solution

InSites Consulting created and managed an ‘always-on’ online community of +2,000 Hong Kong consumers. Our consultants worked in-house at the client’s site, to get close to the different brand teams and manage several weekly online and offline insight activities (including surveys, forums, mobile diaries, offline focus groups, mystery shops and video interviews).

We set up an extensive engagement program, regularly delivering findings and implications to both members and stakeholders. A quarterly customer centricity day with 50 people across the brand teams helped share learnings and inspire further consumer conversations. Since then, insight communities have also been launched for L’Oréal in Korea, Indonesia and mainland China.

The impact

The different brand teams gained insight into the consumers’ deeper aspirations, tribes of influence, changing expectations for social retail experiences and how to stay relevant. By introducing design thinking, InSites Consulting helped brand teams to step back and take the consumers’ perspective in categories such as sensitive skin – leading to fresh solutions. Having several brand teams tap into this consumer community allowed us to synergize activities and build themes around them, bringing in additional value to the company overall.

In ‘19, InSites Consulting got rated as top-scoring agency among L’Oréal stakeholders in Hong Kong.

At the beginning it’s about getting stakeholders’ buy-in. Once you have buy-in and stakeholders are excited about the community and want to use it, it’s how you manage and prioritize the usage.

Vicki Shum, CMI Director, L’Oréal Hong Kong ​

We’d love to showcase what our Insight Communities can do for your brand. So get in touch to request your demo!

Online Insight Communities

Online Insight Communities

Research communities, online discussions boards, bulletin boards, insight ecosystems… what’s in a name. In this bookzine, we bring clarity by defining four different community types, each linked to a concrete research need, illustrated with best practices. 

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