Dive Brief:
- The Estée Lauder Companies is looking to meet and engage with potential customers where they’re spending their time as a way to drive growth, executives said on a Q4 2024 earnings call Tuesday.
- Discussing the company’s strategic priority of “winning in fast-growing channels globally,” CEO Fabrizio Freda reiterated the importance of maintaining high-touch CX in both brick-and-mortar and digital environments. “To do so, our mindset has shifted to more boldly merchandising our brands where consumers are increasingly discovering the shopping for beauty while executing with excellence and staying true to our high-touch approach,” he said.
- The launches of Clinique, Too Faced and Bumble and bumble on the Amazon Premium Beauty store in the U.S. exemplify Estée Lauder’s high-touch strategy, according to Freda. In March, Clinique launched with a skin analysis tool and three months later began offering customers the ability to live chat with Clinique ambassadors.
Dive Insight:
Estée Lauder reported less than favorable earnings Monday, but set out a strategy to reverse the tide that includes engaging with customers in a meaningful way and precision marketing to better respond to popular beauty and skincare trends.
Organic sales declined 2% for fiscal year 2024. The company cited tentative consumer sentiment in China and inflationary pressures in North America for the decline. Freda, who has helmed the organization for 15 years, also announced his retirement.
Discussing the brand's high-touch efforts, Freda cited Bumble and bumble, which offered customers extensive hair education from expert stylists when it launched on Amazon Premium Beauty store. Both Clinique and Bumble and bumble are seeing more male consumers adopt products, and Clinique was able to grow loyalty.
“For Clinique, where we now have a full quarter of performance, we are encouraged by the extent of consumers subscribing for future purchases as well as the strong level of repeat purchases in the quarter,” Freda said.
Estée Lauder is also enhancing its precision marketing capabilities to acquire more customers. By leveraging data of over 200 million consumer profiles, the company is using AI to identify trends and suggest products Estée Lauder already has on market.
“During fiscal year 2024, we began pilot studying in markets around the world to marry trends with our rich portfolio of existing products and innovation to activate against trends with speed,” Freda said. “We have now formalized this process and developed the trend AI tool to enable our brand teams around the world to quickly drive trends to action.”
