L’Oréal Paris, Aveda and Redken named ‘Genius’ hair care brands for digital

The L2 Digital IQ Index attempts to quantify the digital competence of 53 global Hair Care & Color brands and provide a robust tool to diagnose digital strengths and weaknesses to help brands achieve greater return on incremental investment.

The study analyzes the effectiveness of the brand’s site; its search, display, and email marketing efforts; compatibility, optimization, and marketing on smartphones and tablets; and brand presence, community size, content, and engagement on social media.

Digital competence​

For the Genius brands L2 says their digital competence is a point of competitive differentiation for them.

“​[These brands] creatively engineer messaging to reach consumers on a variety of devices and many online environments,” ​says the report.

Of the 53 hair care brands, only three made the top grade, led by L’Oréal Paris, which was commended for its vast outreach.

The L’Oréal brand’s Gold Rewards program members receive a free hair color product after submitting codes from five purchases, whilst its site relaunch features rich personalization and data capture.

The brand boasts the largest YouTube global community: 169 million total views across more than 45 channels, and its responsive-design for smartphones and tablets adapts the experience for the different screens.

Genius brands​

In second place, Aveda is commended as its salon social properties expand the brand’s reach to more than 60 Facebook pages and 35 Twitter accounts.

The Estée Lauder brand’s PurePro site receives the most views per visitor (5.8) and time spent on site (6:25) of any professional site, and abandoned cart emails promote live chat and 24/7 customer service availability.

Its m-commerce site spans regional markets, whilst My Aveda Makeover and My Aveda Style are the only consumer-facing apps with account log-in.

Redken comes in a close third, and makes up the Genius brands thanks to its strong online community and presence in vlogger videos.

Another L’Oréal brand, Redken relaunched its Style Station app which led to an 18 percent increase in sales of new products, whilst mobile devices account for 18 percent of the traffic to Redken.com

Unilever brand Dove was one that just missed out on Genius status, settling for Gifted; as were the heavily-featured L’Oréal’s Kerastase, Garnier and Professional brands.