NEOMA Alumni Mag - N°15 - Juin 2018 - 14

PROFILS - ENTRETIEN -

SAMANTHA DAUDE (PGE 97), CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER OF L'ORÉAL LUXE, EUROPE

REINVENTING THE BEAUTY
BUSINESS @DIGITAL
SAMANTHA DAUDE, HEAD OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND E-COMMERCE BUSINESS AT
THE LUXE DIVISION FOR L'ORÉAL EUROPE, IS BRIMMING WITH ENTHUSIASM AND PASSION
FOR HER COMPANY AND HER FIELD. BECAUSE L'ORÉAL AND DIGITAL ARE WORTH IT!

How did you catch the "digital bug"?
I made the leap to the digital world very early.
After graduation I moved to New York for something new and challenging. Internet start-ups
were springing up like mushrooms there. It was
tremendously exciting. We were witnessing something special with the rise of lots of new, independent media and advertising agencies, tech
companies, etc. That frenzy of creating new things
is happening again in France right now. I can feel
that we've entered a new cycle. Many of the big
players from the 2000 market no longer exist, like
AOL. Back then, Amazon was a start-up threatenL'ORÉAL DIGITAL ing the brick and mortar giant Barnes & Noble. Jeff
FIGURES IN 2017 Bezos was wise enough to take the time to build
his business; he refused to be pressured by profitability concerns. These days, that would be more
difficult: time is a major luxury at the accelerated
pace of today's world. In New York, I joined ORB
billion visits to the group's Digital, a digital ad and media agency, as an
websites
account manager supporting clients such as Time
Magazine, Petsmar, and Coty. There were eight of
us working in a small office on Fifth Avenue, but
we had grown to more than 40 staff when I left. It
had the real collaborative, innovative spirit of a
start-up.
At the beginning I did not even know exactly what
million followers
the company did - digital strategy, media planon social media
ning, online creative and ROI optimization. I
learned the job on the job!

250

38%

digital share in media
spending

What, if anything, is the underlying theme of
your career?
The people I met along my path. At ORB Digital I
was lucky enough to be trained by the start-up's
cofounders. Then, after four years spent in the
New York of "Seinfeld" and "Sex and the City", I felt
it was time to leave the party - though it was at its
peak. Back in France things happened naturally...
I met people from the Estée Lauder Companies
and fell in love with the brands and their values
- and vice versa. It was a perfect match! As Internet Marketing Manager, I reported to the Country
General Manager who shared a lot of his experience with me. Here again, I was lucky to have such

- 14 - NEOMA ALUMNI mag JUIN 2018

insights. I spent seven years launching the digitalization and e-commerce activities of the Estée
Lauder brands like Estée Lauder, Clinique and
MAC. I focused on a seamless on- and off-line
experience in strong collaboration with marketing,
trade marketing and the sales force. Digital was an
amazing opportunity to start a two-way conversation with our customers, both talking and listening
to them. Social media did not exist at that time so
we were engaging bloggers to build our credibility
online. Public relations was a natural next step. We
disrupted the well-established practices of beauty
editors and journalists. Bloggers were the key
influencers of the early 2000s. As you can see, the
need to cultivate brand ambassadors is not new!
Then in 2008, I joined the best-in-class online
retail outfit, Sephora, whose e-commerce site was
then number one in Internet sales in France. Now
it outperforms the flagship store on the Champs
Elysees. I spent 2.5 years accelerating their digital
business.
Then L'Oréal called...
Yes. Jean-Paul Agon decided 2010 was the year of
the digital revolution for the group. I joined the
Group Mass Market Division in a newly created
position on the media team. I worked with the marketing and country teams on defining what digital
could bring the brands in the consumer decision-making journey; building advocacy, awareness and consideration; and influencing purchases
(offline and online). In 2012 I was appointed Head
of E-commerce, which was becoming a significant
portion of the business. In China, 30% of sales in
L'Oréal mass market division are now made online,
predominantly via mobile devices, which opens
many new possibilities. For L'Oréal's mass business, digital is an amazing opportunity to create a
strong emotional link between brands and people.
With user-generated content, our customers can
personalize our brands (L'Oréal Paris, Maybelline,
Garnier, etc.) and re-appropriate them - the consumers themselves act as brand advocates or
brand ambassadors.

https://www.loreal.com/brand/l%E2%80%99or%C3%A9al-luxe

Table des matières de la publication NEOMA Alumni Mag - N°15 - Juin 2018