L'Oréal's In-Store POSM Design

Enhancing the in-store Hair Colour Experience | L’Oreal 

The Focus  

  • L’Oreal India wanted to improve customer perceptions about their hair-colour ranges, especially in retail environments  

  • Was looking for an insights-led comprehensive menu of retail interventions for installing & standardising across large retail chains.   

  • Approached the team at Elephant to design this programme keeping L’Oreal’s brand guidelines in mind     

The Design  

  • The team’s extensive market & user research revealed important insights and consumption patterns across L’Oreal’s extensive portfolio of hair colour brands/ranges  

  • Designed a POSM counter that provided an enhanced customer experience with a cohesive visual language, focused on increasing in-store purchases  

  • The well-received design interventions at retail integrate tech to enable quick trials that catalyse purchases with a powerful callout – “Colour with Confidence,” supplemented by celebrity placement. 

The Story 

The hair colorants market in India is one of the fastest growing verticals, with permanent colorants seeing definitive spikes in demand year-after-year. This is only expected to grow, with market research agencies pegging the rate at anywhere between 2-5%.   

L’Oreal stands at the very top when it comes to market share. The French company’s Garnier Black Naturals brand has seen immense success in the urban regions. As of 2020, market tracker Nielsen declared that 25.8% consumers were opting for L’Oreal as their go-to brand in hair colours.   

For L’Oreal, it was only natural to look for ways to expand user-base & strengthen their leadership position. With a market that is seeing a lot of fresh players as well as existing legacy brands trying to widen their portfolios, the hair colour category is not at all dormant. To be able to appeal to more and newer consumers, L’Oreal team was looking for maximising brand presence and portfolio communication at retail environments as a powerful marketing strategy.   

L'Oreal approached the team at Elephant to design a comprehensive solution to solve for the ask. It had to adhere to L’Oreal’s established brand guidelines while being innovative enough to draw and hold attention in a cluttered retail environment.  

Colour-Me-Informed  

The user-research team at Elephant uncovered a lot of insights about consumption patterns, shelf-space, and related habits. The team also interviewed consumers to understand how they engage with hair colour products in supermarkets. The research un-earthed many usable insights. Indian consumers prefer small SKUs/pouch options for single use. This was not just about per unit price or investment. Buying smaller SKUs allows them to experiment. It also ensures mixing of right quantities for intended results as there is always an apprehension or ambiguity about how a specific colour will look “on me.” Another interesting insight was that for a large user base, hair colour was seen as a functional product rather than a personality enhancer or a style-aid.   

Indians do not have a positive association with hair colour and hair health, so touch-ups or henna/natural are the go-to option. This led our teams to believe that they needed to focus on making users more comfortable with colour as an ideal styling option. Pouches should become an introduction to the larger box where information about how the products could be used for all hair types was seen as an advantage.   

The Elephant team identified different sub-brands owned by L’Oreal, like Casting Creme Gloss and Excellence and their positioning, including Garnier Color naturals (positioned toward naturalness and ingredients) and Garnier Men (only Asia-oriented). The team also identified colour communication associations for different age groups: gold, light pink for mature women, pink for women in the 25-35 age range and green, white for younger audiences.   

In-Store Trials, Redefined  

Given the insights above, the team categorized the new POSM into three distinct parts: salon-inspired (get salon-style hair at home, pushing the DIY approach to expensive salons), rich ultra-glossy (to enhance vibrancy & sophistication), and nourished hair (for health and upkeep).  

The final format of the solution was called "COLOR WITH CONFIDENCE." It focused on the goodness of hair colour that does not harm hair. The design included a white background with communication in distinct colours for achieving contrast & attention.   

The counter design facilitates trials with an interactive screen and a try-on app. After scanning, the customer's face is beamed on the camera with the colour overlay, and a phone app gives them the closest possible result.   

The counter is categorized according to sub-brands, and the interactive screen on top adds the brand appeal & ownership. Vibrant red colours are on the top to push those colours, The light browns at bottom, and grey cover-up/dark browns and black type colours are on the bottom since their sale is need-based and rarely impacted. Celebrity placement on either side of the POSM encourages shoppers to consider the shade that is being promoted, heightening recall and enhancing exploration.   

In conclusion, the team successfully developed an in-store solution for L'Oreal that provided an engaging and easy experience for customers to choose the right hair colour for their needs.   

The design was well-received and has been implemented in Reliance Retail stores across the country. A fine mixture of technological integration, research-driven design, and potent branding in the making of this point-of-sale solution was a game changer. The counter familiarizes shoppers with safer, exciting colouring options and invites them to experiment with their look without any reason for apprehension.