Lancôme: using the French elegance as a branding strategy
- manondesousa
- Nov 15, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 29, 2020
Oh, beautiful France, beautiful Paris… Who hasn’t dream about walking on the prettiest streets of that city, admiring the lights of the buildings and monuments such as the Eiffel tower? To feel the beauty of this moment reflected on oneself, to feel as beautiful as what you can experience in this place.* Well, this is what Lancôme tries to do for its customers.
*In other words, feeling like Julia Roberts in Lancôme’s advertising…
(Source : https://velvet-mag.com/la-vie-est-belle-lancome-with-julia-roberts/)
As Sephora says, “Beauty is a rose that Lancôme offers to women”.
Speaking of roses, it is not a coincidence that the rose is part of the logo and the identity of Lancôme. The brand's creator, Armand Petitjean, choose this as a symbol for French beauty which is one of the elements that Lancôme wants to have as a part of its brand identity.
If you take the name, “Lancôme”, it has been chosen by the creator because he wanted it to a have a real French tone and he has been inspired by the castle "Lanscome", part of the French heritage.
France, and particularly Paris is well-known for its elegance and luxury (well, not everything is France is related to that 😅) and this is what the creator initially wanted to be represented in his brand. Lancôme at first constitute its entire brand image on that. On the website, you can see that the beauty advisor was “Delivering French elegance to the world”. This representation of French elegance is still up to date in Lancôme’s branding. In fact, most of the perfume advertising are filmed in Paris.
The colors used also respect the idea of elegance in the brand identity. The black color use in the font of the logo represent sobriety and class. The second most used color by the brand is pink, to make the connection with the roses colors.
What a better way to represent the elegance of a brand by having ambassadors to reflect it? As a lot of perfumers, Lancôme use celebrities to be the face of its brand and products. The choice of these women is not the least: Julia Robert, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya and most recently Amanda Seyfried.
Using celebrities helps the brand to give a human face to its brand.
As Lancôme promote woman and their strengths, it needed strong personalities to endorse its brand. The personality of the perfume brand will thus be linked to the personality of these women, and in particular to the aspects of these personalities that will be portrayed in advertising. For example, the ad for Idôle shows Zendaya as strong, independent and determined. Those personality characteristics can then be associated with Lancôme's personality and will be later reflected on the women who will wear this perfume. Lancôme wants to empower them.
Moreover, to consolidate this aspect of its personality that wants to empower women, Lancôme does not hesitate to take part in certain subjects and get involved in causes that are close to its heart. Since 2018 Lancôme has joined forces with the ONG care to fight against illiteracy among young women around the world. They created together the “Write her future” program and has helped more than 20 000 women in the world. Taking such initiatives has a huge impact on the brand image. It shows that the company care about other things than itself and making money. Moreover, the choice of purpose for an engaged brand is important, it has to be a subject related to the brand, that the brand will really care about. Helping women is something important for Lancôme, as it is written on the brand’s website: “Lancôme advocates a positive and inspired vision of life because beauty begins with happiness, and happiness cannot be achieved without freedom of expression.”
(See more about this brand purpose in this article: lancôme-s-write-her-future-program-social-listening).
Written by : De Sousa Manon
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