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At ShopTalk Europe, Mark Lallemand, CMO of Western Europe at L’Oréal, outlined the company’s next phase of AI and digital strategy. The message was focused: AI is no longer a test. It is core to how L’Oréal builds and delivers brand experiences.
“This isn’t experimentation anymore,” said Lallemand during the event. “This is marketing transformation. We’re building, with AI at the core of brand interactions.”
One reason is speed. “We used to turn around campaigns in weeks,” he said. “Now we do it in hours.” That acceleration is possible through L’Oréal’s CREAITECH lab, which leverages AI to generate localized visuals and campaign assets from simple text prompts using models including Google’s Imagen 3 and Gemini. This has helped the company scale localized messaging and creative for TikTok and Instagram across 20 markets in EMEA.
“We can take the same product shot and seamlessly place it in a Japanese garden, on a bustling Parisian street or in any other relevant setting,” said Antoine Castex, group data and AI enterprise architect at L’Oréal, in an April 2025 interview with Google.
That ability has helped reduce costs and accelerate storyboarding, concept generation and visual testing, according to Thomas Alves Machado, L’Oréal’s global content director for generative AI. The next phase will bring motion into the mix. Using Google’s Veo 2, L’Oréal will convert static visuals into eight-second animated clips, complete with video and audio elements trained on brand-specific styles.
The same AI principles apply to L’Oréal’s media strategy. L’Oréal is currently using an AI tool called Tidal to automate paid media across platforms without human input. A rollout in the Nordics in 2023 showed a 22% increase in media efficiency and a 14% improvement in campaign effectiveness, according to internal benchmarks shared by the company. Lallemand emphasized that these efficiencies are not about budget cuts. “It’s not about spending more, it’s about spending better,” he said.
Lallemand said the goal is to reduce the distance between product inspiration and purchase. “We’re pushing the limits of personalization at scale,” he said, pointing to the use of dynamic ad targeting and creative optimization in real time.
This all sits on top of L’Oréal’s One L’Oréal transformation plan, launched in 2022 and expanded in 2024, which aims to centralize IT, data and creative infrastructure. According to the company’s April 2025 earnings call, the new system was most recently implemented in China and will roll out in the U.K. and Australia by the end of 2025.
“We want to empower markets with a common system,” said Lallemand.
In 2023, more than 60% of the company’s digital media budget went to social platforms. That figure continued to rise in 2024, although no exact percentage was shared. “It’s not about spending more, it’s about spending better,” said Lallemand.
In addition, AI is transforming product innovation. On the product side, L’Oréal is working with IBM to develop a custom generative AI formulation foundation model, announced in January 2025. “This partnership will extend the speed and scale of our innovation and reformulation pipeline,” said Stéphane Ortiz, head of innovation métiers and product development at L’Oréal Research and Innovation, in a press release.
The goal is to use AI to analyze ingredient data, reduce energy and material waste, and support the brand’s sustainability goals. The system is expected to empower over 4,000 researchers globally to create and reformulate products more quickly.
L’Oréal’s agentic AI tools are also playing a role in how the company manages visibility and control across retail platforms. During the company’s first-quarter earnings call on April 17, CEO Nicolas Hieronimus said L’Oréal brands like Redken and Kerastase are now officially listed on Amazon and Sephora.com, helping the company clean up unauthorized listings and standardize pricing. As the brand scales listings across digital storefronts, agentic AI is being used to automate content updates, monitor listing quality and ensure consistency across regions — tasks that once required manual oversight but can now be executed in real time.
Lallemand added that L’Oréal is now “scaling what works.” He said the company is hiring and training around AI workflows, with new cross-functional teams working across creative, performance and data operations.
“We’re changing the role of marketers inside the organization,” he said. “We’re building new teams with new processes, powered by new tools.”
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