A Commitment To Education – L’Orèal Digital Academy

L’Oréal Professional Products Division’s commitment to positioning digital as a true partnership differentiator in a highly competitive environment, drove the advent of the “L’Oréal Digital Academy”. An online school with the purpose of elevating participating salons in the social, digital, and online space with the objective of attracting new customers.

The Beauty Industry continues to accelerate digitally, and it’s L’Oréal PPD’s role as the industry leader, to be a key driver of this transformation. Having a dedicated program specialising in upskilling salons to improve and enhance their digital footprint, allowed them to attract new consumers and engage like never before with existing ones.

The Digital Academy program ensures that the latest digital touchpoints and technologies relevant to new and emerging trends in consumer interactions are maximised to inspire all stakeholders.

“L’Oréal as the global beauty leader, has access to consumer, media and business insights, tools, resources, and digital platforms that no other company does,” says SYLVIA STEWART, HEAD OF DIGITAL & EDUCATION L’ORÉAL PPD AUSTRALIA. “Sharing this with our salon’s is a privilege and instrumental in teaching them to operate optimally at the forefront of our industry. The biggest strength in the program and a key success factor was launching at a time when salons were needing to innovate in all aspects of digital and education.”

The health situation of 2020 not only demonstrated a need for digital acceleration and upskilling of salons in order to relevantly communicate with consumers, but also showed that there was an appetite for education in various digital formats.

“Success of the program was evident in the overwhelming and ongoing participation from our salon partners,” Sylvia said. “Over 1000 salons were audited on their digital presence and consequently recommended a bespoke education journey based on their needs. Key performance indicators of the success of the Digital Academy from a participating salons perspective are increased social followings and consistent presence, improved star rating and elevated search ranking, just to name a few.

The Digital Academy team designed the automated salon audit process to determine a salons existing social, digital, and online footprint, leading to the determination of the right learning pathway, through to creating bespoke educational content relevant to the Australian landscape, all whilst delivering the curriculum in inclusive and innovative ways for all levels of learners. Providing an end-to-end process and solution our sales and education teams could include in their repertoire of business building tools that they proudly share with valued salon partners.

The L’Oréal Digital Academy is not only for salons! The L’Oréal PPD sales and education teams who were instrumental in delivering this powerful business building tool, needed upskilling as well - and there was no better platform to educate them, than the L’Oréal Digital Academy.

“The L’Oréal Digital Academy provides learning opportunities for internal team members of the L’Oréal team, just like it does for salons. The entire national field, and head office team were trained in February 2020 on the salon auditing tool as well as provided with an experience of the learning content that would be taught within each of the Modules, to be delivered to participants through the L’Oréal Digital Academy.” key outcomes that they would then be able to follow up back in-salon with their salon partners. The objective of this parallel learning model was to elevate all stakeholders equally, to enrich the outcomes and allow continuous evolution in the fast moving, everchanging digital landscape.

The internal teams also had exclusive access to the L’Oréal Digital Academy “Insider’s Edition” series. Conducted by industry experts, discussing content and principles relevant to their field, our internal teams gained valuable insights, both empowering them and honing their new skillsets and enriching their knowledge banks.

“The purpose is to elevate their ability to consult with their salon partners on all things digital to complement the learnings gained through the L’Oréal Digital Academy,” says Sylvia. “The series is delivered quarterly, each time building on knowledge gaps and delivering on requested topics we receive via feedback expressed by our internal teams. Such areas of expertise include SEO, Facebook, Geo Marketing, E-commerce and Social commerce. Future sessions’ content will include Augmented Reality and even AI!”

Sylvia Stewart, Head of Digital & Education, L’Oréal PPD Australia

For more information contact your L’Oréal Professional Products Division’s representative.