Cosmetics represents a deeply personal, hedonic product category, and consumers often express strongly affective opinions and evaluations of these items. For ELC, the corporation that owns Estée Lauder and several other cosmetics and fragrance brands, gauging such sentiments is critical, prompting a growing collaboration with Google Cloud to use AI to track people’s feedback on social media in real time. With such input, brands such as Clinique and Aramis can respond more quickly to viral trends, which appear especially commonly in the cosmetics sector. This development builds on an existing relationship, in which Google helped ELC link all its various in-house data within a single system, then produce personalized recommendations for clients. But by adding in AI-powered large language models, this partnership also can gauge how well those personalized (and other) offerings actually appeal to influential users. Not that expectations are high or anything, but according to ELC, it hopes this expanded collaboration will allow it “to better track consumer sentiment, inform research and development goals and simplify internal workflows while increasing productivity.”

Sources: Peter Adams, “Estée Lauder Bets Generative AI Can Keep Pace with Shifting Consumer Tastes,” Marketing Dive, August 29, 2023