This paper presents a comprehensive public relations campaign proposal for L'Oréal's launch of a new summer product line, titled "Sublime Summer." Drawing on an internal and external situational analysis—including a SWOT evaluation—the proposal outlines informational and motivational objectives, identifies two primary target customer segments, and recommends specific strategies and tactics. Key elements include a themed product-launch event, controlled and uncontrolled communication channels, a celebrity spokesperson strategy, and an activity calendar. The paper also addresses research methods, budget considerations, and evaluation techniques such as the Starch and Gallup-Robinson methods.
The following pages describe a public relations campaign proposal for L'Oréal's summer product line launch. The PR campaign proposed here is considered the most suitable variant for launching a new product line for such a major player in the cosmetics market. The campaign focuses on maintaining L'Oréal's relationship with its current clients while building new relationships with prospective clients, all grounded in trust. The campaign has specific goals and objectives that must be attained.
This PR campaign proposal is based on analyzing the marketing and communication situation at L'Oréal and on understanding the behavior of the company's customers. It also constitutes a plan of action for obtaining certain advantages from the use of mass media, targeted messages, and allocated budgets.
Specifically, this campaign proposal addresses the following issues:
Stating the goals — the global results that L'Oréal expects to achieve through its activity.
Establishing the objectives — the specific actions and phases that measure the progress made by the company in achieving its goals.
Stating the declaration of principles — a concise presentation of L'Oréal's major values, its objectives, its place and responsibility among similar companies, and the direction the company's activity is following. This statement is valuable because it offers the company visibility within society, facilitates communication processes, and provides a general background against which the PR campaign can establish specific goals and objectives.
Defining the needs, objectives, and resources of targeted customers — which requires a significant research effort through complex methods focused on the public and its opinions regarding the company.
Systematic planning of the campaign — including an analysis of strengths and weaknesses.
Continuous monitoring and evaluation of the campaign — emphasizing successful actions on one hand, and activities that require improvement on the other.
Selecting adequate media for each category of customers — maintaining a balance between interpersonal communication and mass media communication.
PR campaign planning — containing all steps: problem definition, situation analysis, establishing objectives, identifying target customer segments, establishing strategies, establishing tactics, establishing timing for each activity, establishing the budget, and establishing evaluation procedures.
Identifying the problems or issues regarding public relations can sometimes be a difficult process. However, these issues do not always refer to negative aspects of the company. In this case, the main issue refers to certain opportunities that L'Oréal may benefit from in attaining its general goals. Specifically, the issue consists of coordinating a particular project: launching a new L'Oréal line of products for summer use, promoting this line, and promoting and maintaining the company's image among both current and potential future clients.
This step involves gathering detailed data regarding the main issue — its historical background, the parties involved, and its effects. All these aspects must be thoroughly studied in order to discover attitudes, opinions, or behaviors that need to be either changed or maintained for each customer segment, and to identify the most suitable communication method for attaining the campaign's objectives. The analysis of the current situation is divided into two sections: internal factors analysis and external factors analysis.
The internal factors analysis refers to the images and actions of L'Oréal's key people, and to any structure or process relevant to the issue at hand. Before embarking on this PR campaign, it is recommended that the company perform a communication audit in order to better understand the way L'Oréal communicates with its audience.
L'Oréal short historical background: The L'Oréal Group was founded in 1909 by French chemist Eugène Schueller. Today, L'Oréal is the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company. The company is active in cosmetics, particularly skin care, hair color, sun protection, make-up, perfumes, and hair care (Wikipedia, 2007). L'Oréal has also developed activities in the dermatological and pharmaceutical fields. The company has five worldwide research and development centers: two in France, one in the United States, one in Japan, and one in China. L'Oréal brands are divided into four distinct categories: professional products (L'Oréal Professionnel, Redken), consumer products (L'Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York), luxury products (the Body Shop, Cacharel, Ralph Lauren, and others), and active cosmetics (La Roche-Posay, Vichy Laboratoires). The company has 52,080 employees.
Key people at the L'Oréal Group: Liliane Bettencourt (main shareholder), Eugène Schueller (founder), François Dalle (CEO 1957–1984), Graham Hedworth, Lindsay Owen-Jones (Chairman), and Jean-Paul Agon (CEO).
L'Oréal stockholders: The Bettencourt family holds 27.5%, Nestlé holds 26.4%, treasury shares represent 3.9%, and the remaining 42.2% are publicly traded.
Financial information on L'Oréal:
Revenue: €14.53 billion (2005). Operating income: €2.266 billion (2005). Net income: €1.639 billion (2005). Consolidated sales: €15.8 billion (2006).
L'Oréal's mission: "The right to be beautiful day after day" (L'Oréal, 2007). The company is committed to promoting an approach to beauty that is fun, affordable, fulfilling, genuine, and generous. L'Oréal promotes innovation and sustainable development.
L'Oréal's values: striving for excellence, a passion for adventure, enrichment through diversity, valuing individual talent, and leading innovation in beauty.
L'Oréal's advertising slogan: initially "Because I'm worth it," which later became "Because you're worth it."
"Market environment, strengths, and strategic direction"
"Campaign goals, customer segments, and event tactics"
"Media plan, timeline, budget, and evaluation methods"
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