Social Media Campaign Review: India’s Red Carpet to Cannes by L’Oreal Paris

The 66^th Cannes Film Festival will play host to some of the most glamorous global celebrities from May 15^th – 26^th, 2013. This year the festival features L’Or Sunset, an all-new makeup collection created especially for the occasion by L’Oreal Paris.

With Indian Cinema celebrating 100 years Bollywood has taken center stage on the much awaited red carpet. It is no surprise then that L’Oreal Paris India has launched ‘India’s Red Carpet to Cannes’, a digital campaign that lets very Indian girl walk the Red Carpet to Cannes digitally, feel like a Diva and most importantly feel ‘Worth It.’

Objectives:

The prestigious Red Carpet at Cannes has traditionally been the cornerstone of the famous Film Festival.  In keeping with the theme, L’Oreal Paris has formulated a unique campaign to animate this ceremonious walk for every Indian girl.   The spotlight with this enadvor is on L’Or Sunset, an all-new makeup collection created especially for the occasion by L’Oreal Paris, Indian beauties and Bollywood magic.

Execution:

This virtual red carpet was spread all the way from India to Cannes.  Fans across the official L’Oreal Paris India social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest had to cover the distance in just 10 days in order to gain access to exclusive coverage from the festival.

From May 6^th – 14^th 2013 fans were required to perform a series of tasks on Facebook and Twitter (each of which earned them certain miles on the Red Carpet), in order to cover the distance.

These tasks included ‘Tweet like a Bollywood star, ‘Share your Bollywood look’, ‘GetFilmy’, Love L'Or Sunset and My Red Carpet Companion all of which were strategically designed in keeping with the central theme, Bollywood, while living up to the legacy of the L’Oreal brand. The most important aspect of the endeavor was to give every Indian girl an opportunity to walk the Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet.

The campaign was executed through a landing page which was especially created for this activity.  This page was the place where the red carpet kept getting longer as fans completed more tasks and more people joined the page, and in the end after completing the last task they finally reached their destination- Cannes.

Positives:

The campaign has been designed and executed keeping in mind L’Or Sunset, an all-new makeup collection created especially for the occasion by L’Oreal Paris.  It has also attempted to draw public attention towards the completion of 100 years of Indian cinema.

The moment the Cannes Film Festival went live the L'Oreal Paris India page has been constantly sharing exclusive Cannes coverage with its fans and followers. The L'Oreal Paris Instagram account was launched with this campaign and grew from 30 to 1100+ followers in less than a week.

As such it was well timed and implemented on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.  By choosing young Indian girls as their target audience, L’Oreal Paris has strategically targeted their customer base online.  The virtual Red Carpet was a unique endeavor, aptly celebrating the celebrated walk of fame at Cannes.

Scope for Improvement

From where I see it the campaign did well as far as idea, implementation and execution went. The only thing missing perhaps was some offline action.  But with the release of 6 Bollywood inspired make up looks created specially with the collection by L'Oreal Paris official beauty expert Namrata Soni, this aspect too seems to be covered.

Perhaps an offline contest leading to at least one Indian girl actually walking the Red carpet at Cannes might have made the campaign more interesting and exciting.

Conclusion

All in all, ‘India’s Red Carpet to Cannes’, is a digital campaign which is in line with L’Oreal’s’ overall branding strategy. As the brand seeks to consolidate its position in the Indian cosmetics market, using the digital space to reach out to its customers is undoubtedly the way to go.