Top beauty brands interested in expanding their reach and creating stronger loyalty must personalize the buying experience. Personalization — or developing individualized tools and messaging for each potential customer — is a powerfully important part of today’s beauty marketplace.

Many internationally known beauty brands, such as Coty, Kenvue, and Estée Lauder Companies, have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality technology into their personalization strategies. Recently, these brand representatives discussed this trend toward interactive, immersive experiences at the Global Beauty & Fashion AI Forum in New York.

Personalized beauty is quickly becoming a mandatory requirement to be noticed in the marketplace. Technology can offer a distinct advantage as companies work to tailor their recommendations and create memorable and effective customer experiences.

Perfect Corp., which has led the way in providing proprietary AI technology for the last 10 years, is a valuable partner in this effort toward personalized beauty. Each beauty brand works with Perfect Corp. differently, from creating virtual try-on tools for realistic customer experiences to offering facial scanning to formulate product, lifestyle, and treatment recommendations.

How AI Drives Personalization

Pippa McArdle, the senior vice president and head of global media and consumer experience for the Estée Lauder Companies, explained that the entire process for beauty recommendations has changed. In the past, a customer had to go into a store or online to receive a general suggestion that applied to everyone.

When a consumer can use a highly personalized AI tool, brands have an opportunity to offer an entire suite of products or provide advice for full makeup application.

“This helps us understand what touchpoints the consumer is looking for and how we can meet them where they are,” she explained.

Good, First-Party Data Matters for Companies

Brands can use AI to leverage this connection with consumers, but only if they have access to what is known as first-party data. This data is collected directly from the consumer, and it’s crucial for any personalization effort.

Shanna Weinblatt, the vice president of innovation, beauty tech, and Web3 for Coty, said that her company’s 50 global brands rely on strong data to build the most effective and tailored customer experiences.

“We want to capture first-party data and leverage that one-to-one conversation and CRM” (customer relationship management), she said.

Trend-to-Action Accelerated With AI

With social media platforms like TikTok, companies need a fast way to translate trends into retail action with a short turnaround. Perfect Corp’s AI technology supports this personalized approach in real time.

MAC, an Estée Lauder company, used AI to demonstrate trending techniques to makeup artists and saw five times the engagement and 60% more average order value (AOV).

AI Supports Health & Wellness Campaigns

Kenvue, a consumer company focused on skin health and beauty, also integrates AI into their personalization efforts. For example, they worked with Perfect Corp. to create an AI virtual skin assessment tool that helps customers identify seasonal, hormonal, and lifestyle changes to manage and treat skin issues.

Kate Melzer, the company’s head of global brand skin tech, explained that this AI-fueled personalization effort did more than meet customer needs with current products. They could recommend skincare products and a nutritional gummy for the individual skin concern.

“As a result, we created a new supplement line,” she said. “Customers understand how their internal health impacts their skin health.”

Virtual Try-Ons Integrate With Paid Media

Personalization is most powerful when integrated with paid media, as Estée Lauder Companies discovered when they used a virtual try-on tool in an advertising campaign. Loyal and potential customers alike stopped scrolling through their social media and saw what products in the MAC, Estée Lauder, and Clinique brands could look like on their faces.

McArdle reported that customers spent 9% more time on each ad and four times longer on average on the page.

“Engaging the media is where we are headed,” she said.

AI Offers Personalized Consumer Routines

Beauty brands want to create experiences that seem tailor-made for the individual. Many companies have such a wide range of products that they can create a customized routine for both the morning and evening based on the customer's personalized needs. AI makes this possible.

With an AI tool, customers can gain access to many different experiences within the brand. For example, they can learn recommendations and routines for skincare, beauty, and haircare. With each brand, the CRM can be nuanced and available on a mobile device, laptop, or in a store for a one-on-one discussion.

Emerging Trends in AI Personalization

The youngest generations, especially Gen Z, now expect an individualized shopping experience, and beauty brand leaders agree they must meet customers where they are. This means being online, creating engaging in-store AI experiences, and working with influencers and at events. Consistency matters, the brand executives agreed.

They also noticed a few noteworthy trends regarding AI and personalization:

Access: Perfect Corp’s AI technology gives brands access to as many people as possible. They can learn new insights about their consumers and identify products, needs, and trends they otherwise could not.
Prevention and longevity: Younger consumers are doing more than embracing the tech for makeup and skin health maintenance recommendations. They are seeking solutions to prevent problems in the future, and they are using AI to help meet this need.
Holistic wellness: First-party data is especially useful as technology makes holistic wellness more mainstream.
Leveraging data for the future: Perhaps most importantly, beauty brands have recognized that AI can create opportunities to serve customers better. With each touchpoint of the face, AI makes it possible to leverage tools and products that create the personalized look a consumer wants. This can shape the industry in the future.

Beauty Brands Look to AI for Personalized Approach

In today’s modern beauty marketplace, forward-focused companies report that AI is vital to personalizing their message, products, and customer experiences. In particular, the executives at the Global Beauty & Fashion AI Forum in New York report that tech innovation provides the tools they need to tailor recommendations and create immersive brand experiences.

Watch the panel discussion today to learn more about the power of personalization and how Perfect Corp. works with beauty brands.

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