More on Eastman Procter Partnership

 Was linked to additional information: 

Procter & Gamble partners with Eastman to reduce virgin plastic use By Julia Wray in CosmeticsBusiness

The companies will collaborate to expand infrastructure to boost plastic recycling rates in the US

FMCG giant Procter & Gamble has pledged to use materials made by Eastman’s molecular recycling technologies to reduce its use of virgin plastic from fossil fuels.

P&G will also collaborate with the specialty materials business on advocacy initiatives aimed at reducing the reliance on virgin plastic and enabling a circular economy.

Eastman’s Eastman Renew materials are made via molecular recycling technologies which use waste plastic that would otherwise go to landfill.

"Eliminating waste plastic from our environment is a complex global challenge that requires a comprehensive, collaborative approach across the entire plastics lifecycle," Lee Ellen Drechsler, Procter & Gamble Senior Vice President of R&D, commented.

"P&G is taking a thoughtful approach to addressing the collection, processing, revitalisation and reuse of materials.  ... ' 

L'Oreal Taking Cosmetics Digital, Virtual

Worked with a large Cosmetics Company, so of interest

L’Oréal’s New Digital Chief Takes Cosmetics Virtual  By The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2021

L'Oréal Group's newly appointed digital executive is exploring how online games, augmented reality and social media can help the French cosmetics company reach new demographics amid an expected increase in e-commerce sales.

"The pandemic has been a catalyst for digital adoption," and L'Oréal is "constantly reimagining" its digital strategies, said Asmita Dubey, the company's chief digital and marketing officer.

Before her appointment as digital and marketing chief, Ms. Dubey held digital and marketing management positions at L'Oréal for eight years.  Ms. Dubey succeeded former Chief Digital Officer Lubomira Rochet in April and reports to L'Oréal Group Chief Executive Nicolas Hieronimus, who took the reins in May.

L'Oréal's brands include Lancôme, Kiehl's, La Roche-Posay, Garnier and Maybelline New York. The cosmetics company has about 3,000 employees who are focused on digital initiatives. It employs about 85,400 people total.

From The Wall Street Journal

Cosmetic Surgery Goldmine?

A look at consequences of behavior in pandemic, suggested by a former colleague.

Zoom has turned into a goldmine... for the cosmetic surgery industry

Martin Lindstrom   Brand and Culture Transformation Expert and Founder of Lindstrom Company

Plastic surgery is booming. Despite the coronavirus (or more likely because of it), record numbers of consumers are sneaking out of their homes, visiting clinics, and putting down as much as $20,000 to convert today’s version of themselves into a younger self. The number of cosmetic procedures has tripled.

The world continues to work from home, with no sign of returning to the office anytime soon, and isolation in our home offices has brought huge, often unexpected changes to our lives. For one thing, you’re suddenly spending lots of time on Zoom, where you’re in constant communication with a stamp-sized window that features … you.

It’s as if we’ve affixed tiny mirrors to our monitors. We’re suddenly watching ourselves, and we’re keenly, painfully aware of how others see us. ... '

Brick and Mortar Making a Comeback

I have my doubts,  but there will always be specialty examples, new kinds of channels.

Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Making a Comeback in HBS Working Knowledge

Left for dead alongside the retail highway, physical stores are suddenly finding new ways to compete, say Jill Avery and Antonio Moreno.

While legacy companies like Sears are shuttering their doors, a growing number of online-first companies—from Amazon to Rent the Runway—are opening new storefronts and transforming the shopping experience. Senior Lecturer Jill Avery and Associate Professor Antonio Moreno discuss the new rules of retail.

Q: What’s different about the physical storefront in this renaissance of retail?

Jill Avery: There’s a lot of experimentation around what a store is and what it could do. In this new worldview, a store has to create a branded experience that goes beyond the purely transactional—one that aims to build a relationship with the customer and communicate the brand in an experiential way. There’s still a purpose for physical shopping in today’s environment; it just has to feel different from what we’ve gotten used to as consumers.

Antonio Moreno: People still like going to a physical store to have an experience and learn about products, but now that can be decoupled from the act of taking possession of a product because there are better and cheaper ways of doing that. Malls are going to increasingly transform into places for experiences, not just for taking inventory home. What probably will not survive are the retailers that are more like a warehouse, or just physical repositories of goods. Real estate is too expensive for that purpose. The opportunity to think about online and offline as complementary channels has opened up possibilities that would not have been imaginable with the more traditional, siloed approach. 

Avery: I would give the example of Glossier, which is a digitally native, direct-to-consumer cosmetics company. They have one permanent showroom in New York, but everything else that they’ve done, from a physical retail perspective, has been a pop-up. The whole point of the retail experience is not to sell the product, but to introduce you to the brand in a way that can be shared with others through social media. There are special areas in the store that are set up for selfies, where you can take a picture of yourself in Glossier pink and share that on social media. They might serve a small number people during a pop-up experience, but if those people send that message out on social media, the effect is an exponential multiplier. Glossier’s expectation is that you will move your purchasing to the digital space after visiting the pop-ups, so it’s not meant to be a channel of distribution; it’s an acquisition engine and a way to make a brand splash in a particular market. ... "

Neutrogena scans Faces, Builds Masks

Clever idea,  using smartphone as a sensor, other applications?

Neutrogena app 3D scans your face to create perfect-fit sheet masks
Because there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to faces.

By Rachel England, @rachel_england in Engadget

At CES last year, Neutrogena unveiled an iPhone attachment that lets you examine the condition of your skin in excruciating detail -- pores, moisture levels, wrinkles you didn't even know were there, the lot. Now, branching off the Skin 360 tool, the company has unveiled an app that accurately measures your face to ensure a good fit for the sheet masks designed to counteract these skin woes.

The iOS app, called MaskiD, uses the TrueDepth camera in the iPhone X, XS and XR to capture a 3D image of your face, and create a sheet mask that fits it perfectly. The app doesn't have to be used in conjunction with the 360 Skin Tool, but pairing them up will help the app determine the best combination of ingredients for your skin's needs. The system uses five ingredients -- ranging from smoothing hyaluronic acid to exfoliating stabilized glucosamine -- that are 3D printed onto the mask in the exact places (forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, and so on) that need them.  ... "

Virtual Beauty in Augmented Reality

We spend some time looking at Virtual Beauty applications.  Was never successful in our day.   What can make it work here?   Is this an example of AR success?   A review.

MAC Virtual Try-on Mirror review
It's crazy how well MAC's Virtual Try-On Mirror can mimic makeup     By Brenda Stolyar in Digitaltrend

Feeling completely lost with makeup? MAC’s Virtual Try-On Mirror lets you try on various looks without making a mess.

Shopping for makeup can be a little overwhelming. While we do have social media and YouTube creators to thank for the influx of beauty gurus and makeup tutorials, it’s common to think you won’t be able to pull off stellar and dramatic looks. But what if all you needed was augmented reality (AR) to give you that extra boost of confidence? MAC Cosmetics’ new beauty mirror gives users the opportunity to try on different makeup looks in real-time, with the help of ModiFace’s AR technology ... "

Virtual VR-Like Makeover from Sephora

Was involved with tests of this concept a number of times, it seemed the idea thing for the smart home, cosmetics aisle.  Several makers had this available, but it seems not to have stuck.   Good video at the link,  This uses a more VR-like approach, which is nicely demonstrated in a Sephora store.

How does this look? Be your own virtual make-up artist  In the BBC.
French cosmetics chain Sephora has introduced technology that enables its customers to try on make-up virtually and test out different colours and shades before buying.

Its "virtual artist" tech is also available as a mobile app.
Like other retailers competing in a fast-moving digital landscape, the company is using online tools to engage customers in its physical stores. ...  "

Amazon Outfit Compare

We worked on a number of related virtual comparison ideas over the years.    Aimed at things like eyeware and cosmetics.  None were completely successful.   Can Amazon crack this by funneling their large customer base through this?   What is the conversation needed?

Amazon will now tell Prime members what to wear via a new “Outfit Compare” feature  by Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa)   In Techcrunch: 

Amazon has been steadily pushing its way into fashion over the past several years, with investments in its own private labels – from workwear to activewear – plus increased fashion ad spending and even its own trend-obsessed TV show, Style Code Live. Now the online retailer is looking to dole out its fashion advice to the masses, too, through a new feature called “Outfit Compare,” which is currently available to Prime members.

In the latest version of the Amazon shopping app, Prime members will find “Outfit Compare” in the sidebar navigation under the “Programs and Features” section.

This is the area where Amazon often rolls out its newer services and offerings, like Restaurants, Launchpad, Watch & Shop, Dash buttons and, more recently, its curated recommendations storefront dubbed “Interesting Finds.” ... "

Still Looking for Full Featured Smart Mirrors

We featured the idea, and saw it at other consumer innovation labs a decade ago.  Mostly it dealt with using the mirror for cosmetics options and delivering basic 'news and weather' information in the morning. That alone is fairly easy to do.  A mostly one way visual and audio interface.  Stationary to places in the home, the office, or even in conference rooms.  But it seems the demand today is beyond the basic.

   A new example is being promoted:  " ... The problem with the Perseus smart mirror is the same as with all of the ones that preceded it: over-promising a set of features that will be incredibly difficult to deliver on. These include: voice recognition, video streaming, an HD camera with time-lapse capabilities, fully customizable widgets, third-party apps, and the list goes on ..  " .  Video at the link. 

Some of the idea is similar to the Amazon Echo with a display.  The capability is stationary.  You could mount any number of them in  place.  Say as part of wall displays in an office.  The inclusion of camera enables conferencing and gestural interaction, as well as displaying tailored information.  But that's beyond a mirror.

Also in retail to sell things that we wear like clothes, cosmetics and eyeglasses.  Experimented with several of these examples.

See my previous mirror posts.

Challenging Metrics

Challenging  metrics, usually a good thing to do, even in a thought experiment.  In Adage:

Why Google's 'Time Spent' Metric May Not Be the Best Measure
Marketers Need an Accurate Way to Measure How Their Content Is Performing  By Jerrid Grimm.

Augmented Cosmetics Reality at Sephora

Have seen this idea tried many times.  Give consumers the ability to have a mirror that shoes how cosmetics will look on their face.  'The 'magic mirror' idea.   Here a new example at Sephora.  An example of augmented reality.

Intelligent Color From L'Oreal

In Clickz:  New ways to market cosmetics in context.   With similarity to some of our virtual makeover work. " ... In a location perhaps better known for rats and urine, cosmetics brand L'Oreal Paris is bringing beauty in what it calls the first-ever intelligent vending experience in the New York City Subway, the L'Oreal Paris Intelligent Color Experience.
Launching November 4, the installation works as a three-step process that detects the colors in a woman's outfit, picks the most prominent and related palettes, recommends L'Oreal Paris products and allows women to purchase those products on the spot, the brand says. ... " 

Sephora Haul Addiction

Ann Althouse examines the 100,000 videos entitled "Sephora Haul' on Youtube.    Quite an interesting view of what might be called cosmetics addiction and ultimately cosmetics in retail.   Despite my former  involvement in cosmetics CPG, I was unaware of this social direction.    Jezebel also comments.  A problem that has no name?  At one point it would be interesting to try to extract insight from these 100K videos.