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Submitted by XOMAD

L'Oréal USA Influencer Research and Insights

Influencer Marketing

XOMAD ran influencer focus groups and surveys for L'Oréal USA to evaluate a return to the US market, drawing on 80+ Influencers across 4 Focus Groups.

4focus groups
80+influencers
1report

Case in 60 seconds

L'Oréal set out to evaluate the potential of a brand returning to its US market, and XOMAD took that question on within its Influencer Research and Insights program, so the work was framed as evaluation rather than promotion.

The work appears to turn on the reading that influencers who discuss trends before those trends arrive hold market knowledge a conventional panel does not, which is why the vetting weighed expertise and creativity rather than audience scale.

The organizing thesis was to treat carefully vetted influencers as expert respondents whose knowledge of the space could be gathered, moderated and reported back to the brand as a story rather than distributed as content.

XOMAD vetted influencers for knowledge and creativity in the space, used its technology to find people talking about trends before they were trends, determined key cities to host focus groups, and facilitated moderated sessions, surveys and final reporting.

XOMAD reports 4 Focus Groups, 80+ Influencers and 1 Report, so what the page documents is the scope of the research delivered rather than any commercial, sales or audience measure of the market it examined.

Strategy Breakdown

Influencers with expertise in the market, specifically the people XOMAD identified as true trendsetters because they were talking about trends before those trends were established.
Based on the available evidence, the challenge was one of re-entry rather than launch, because a brand returning to the US market has to establish whether demand for it already exists in the category conversation.
L'Oréal appears in the work as the client asking a question rather than as the subject of published creative, so the brand's role was to be advised, and the page does not describe any consumer-facing execution.
The selection method suggests an assumption that influencers act as early indicators of category demand, because XOMAD deliberately sought out people whose conversation ran ahead of the trends themselves.

Creative & Execution System

Partners

  • XOMAD

Participation mechanic

  • Influencers took part directly, through moderated focus group sessions hosted in key cities and through influencer surveys, so participation was the research instrument itself rather than an audience-facing device.

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Focus Groups4 Focus Groups
Influencers80+ Influencers
Report1 Report

Why XOMAD's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Vetting for early trend conversation reads as a workable proxy for category expertise, because an influencer who names a trend before it spreads has already demonstrated the judgement a brand is buying when it asks for a read on a market.

  2. 2

    Influencer relationships appear usable as a research instrument rather than only as media, since the focus groups and surveys here produced a single report on market potential and no consumer-facing output at all.

  3. 3

    Choosing key cities for the sessions suggests a market read treated as local rather than national, because the expertise the study wanted is concentrated in particular places rather than spread evenly across a country.

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