Dive Brief:
- L’Oréal, the cosmetics company with about $29 billion in yearly sales, is running a smartphone promotion tied with this year’s Cannes Film Festival in southern France. YouCam Makeup, the mobile application developed by Perfect Corp., showcases L’Oréal products with 64 makeup suggestions that appear as an overlay on a selfie, according to a press release by the company.
- To reach the live broadcast, the app users swipe through to the Cannes stream, which is available in the U.S., Mexico, Russia and India. Makeup artist Liza Lash, whose YouTube video tutorials have 28,000 subscribers, will appear in a video stream from the festival’s red carpet as L’Oréal’s brand representative.
- YouCam Makeup is available for both Android and iOS devices.
Dive Insight:
Perfect Corp.’s 400 million downloads of its makeup and apparel apps indicate that consumers are experimenting with AR technology to try on new looks virtually. The company's CEO Alice Chang has touted the company’s strengths in AR as a way to engage customers and guide them toward a transaction.
It’s not a stretch to expect most fashion and cosmetics brands will eventually incorporate AR into their mobile capabilities to help people shop online. However, for now such technology can be resource-intensive to develop, which is why brands like L'Oréal are partnering with platforms like YouCam.
The partnership is the latest example of how beauty, entertainment and mobile technology are proving to be an alluring mix. In March, Paramount Pictures partnered with YouCam to showcase looks around its "Ghost in the Shell" film and in April, filters for Broadway musical "War Paint" appeared in the app.
Perfect Corp. is trying to maintain its first-mover advantage in the cosmetics AR space with additional features like makeup tutorials and live programming from red carpet events. But as Snapchat has seen with its filters and masks that quickly get copied by Facebook, novelty features often get adopted in the marketplace quickly. Does this mean Perfect Corp. might blend its own private label cosmetics line to capitalize on the brand awareness YouCam has built with young beauty consumers?
