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SHENAN REED: Five six, seven, eight.
[LAUGHTER]
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Come on.
I had to.
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Look, I spent years doing musical theater
and my first job out of college was
working for the Tony Awards.
And while I don't think today is a Tony eligible production--
and please, if it is, let me know--
I do want to fully recognize that I finally
made it to Broadway.
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Don't give up on your dreams, kids.
OK.
But let's talk about what really got me here today,
and that is our ever-changing world of media planning.
It's gotten a lot more complicated
with so many screens, and surfaces, and channels.
And so last year at the ANA, some of you
might remember that I suggested that by my rough calculations,
there are over 73,000 different permutations of ways and places
to place media today.
That is continuing to grow.
Media planning is no longer concentrated
to a few key relationships.
We don't get to come to the up-fronts,
and shake a few hands, and make a few phone calls,
and have our media investments done for the year.
I think those days of the "Mad Men" three martini lunches are
sadly finally far behind us.
But we have come a long way, and that is partly
because of Google and YouTube.
And I still very much remember my first Google sales rep.
It was 1999.
I'll give you an idea of how early he was in Google.
His email address was mike@google.com.
[LAUGHTER]
And his whole thing was we've got these search engines.
You can buy keywords people are searching for.
Trust me, the world is not the same anymore.
And heck, we might not be buying keywords anymore.
But the underlying principle for our work is still the same.
You've heard me say it before.
Advertising done well is a service to the consumer.
And for L'Oreal, we believe this deeply.
We call it consumer centricity, and it
means that we will always--
and I do mean always--
follow the audience's lead.
So we need to be where they want to be.
And that can be hard because our audience is always moving.
Today in 2022, a lot of our work is
focused on embracing the new and the evolving with consumers,
so we can deliver on what's important to them.
Let me share a story.
Over the past couple of years, we dealt with the same issues
as every CPG brand.
We had to adapt to a new normal.
Everybody was doing their thing at home.
We needed to pivot to quickly support our consumers.
Then in 2021, we saw this hopefulness in the consumer.
And we believed it was time to get back to a great return
to glamour, a summer where things were maybe not quite
normal, but one where we might, once again, be
able to make connections, see friends and family,
and get back out into the world.
We knew it was time to lean in to our upper funnel,
demand-generating media.
What was interesting about this time was
we were seeing audience behavior patterns
around ad-supported streaming and a boom in CTV that we knew
wasn't going to go away.
And Alan mentioned this a moment ago,
but a lot of this boom in watch time,
it was happening on YouTube.
So last year, L'Oreal leaned in heavily to YouTube
to be where the audience was watching,
to deliver a relevant message that we knew they would value.
Now we are a company that has a very long and successful
partnership with linear TV.
All right, work with me.
You know the line.
"Maybe she's born with it.
Maybe it's--"
AUDIENCE: Maybelline!
SHENAN REED: Yes.
And you know that line because of TV commercials.
But this change-- this new normal--
it required us to take some big steps to follow our consumer
into the streaming landscape, to connect with them where
they are.
And L'Oreal doesn't do anything, as many of you know,
without proof points and research.
So what did we do?
We ran a meta analysis across nearly 30 NCS sales
lift studies.
And you know what we found?
Our YouTube activity delivered an average of 6% sales
lift for our campaigns.
Initial results also indicated that CTV
drives higher awareness lift.
Turns out that big glass in your living room--
yeah, still pretty influential.
And as you can imagine, those phenomenal findings
gave us the confidence to really lean in to our strategy.
Now this doesn't mean moving away from television,
but rather focusing on that big glass at an opportunity
to lean into YouTube CTV.
Now our consumer is still very much in the living room,
but they're watching a wider variety of content--
content that's maybe more personal,
that's more of the moment.
You can ignore that behavior or you can choose to show up.
We chose to show up.
So we increased our YouTube investment by 102%
year over year.
And we put some significant focus
on developing great ad experiences for our audiences.
And that means investing in great creative
across the L'Oreal family.
We designed especially strong 15-second creative spots
for Maybelline New York--
spots that didn't feel interruptive, that actually
tapped into the voices and energy of the consumer,
and that felt natural, especially on CTV,
where we knew the audience.
The strategy of focusing on YouTube CTV
really worked for Maybelline.
Now you can imagine that because I'm standing here
making my Broadway debut to you at a YouTube conference.
[LAUGHTER]
But even so, the results were astounding.
We saw a six-to-one return on ad spend on YouTube CTV screens
across new consumers-- six-to-one.
We drove best in class consideration lift, best
in class ad recall, and the majority of that impact
was coming from new consumers.
Now that's important because coming out of the pandemic,
we knew we needed to attract the next generation of consumers
and first-time buyers.
And we were excited to welcome these new fans for years
to come.
This kind of success on YouTube comes
when you marry a purposeful approach to format, audience,
and device mix with strong measurement
and strong creative.
Together, we can make amazing things
happen, like a six-to-one return against new brand buyers.
And to boot, YouTube did it with the flexibility that allowed
us to grow with confidence.
Now I am almost out of time.
Don't cry for me, Argentina.
[LAUGHTER]
But if I can leave you with, please, one
take-away today, it is to please follow your audience,
really focus your strategy on the who, the how, and where,
and embrace the opportunity that we have to deliver great ad
experiences in this world of connected screens
and connected audiences.
Thank you so much.
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