Olay taps AI for skin analysis, product recommendations platform

Dive Brief:

Procter & Gamble’s Olay brand made its debut at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, showcasing the global roll out of the Olay Skin Advisor platform that uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to provide smart skin analysis and personalized product recommendations, the company said in a press release.
Olay Skin Advisor analyzes the condition of skin in a selfie and pinpoints which areas are 'aging' a person's appearance. After answering several questions, Skin Advisor also delivers personalized product recommendations.
A beta version of the platform has been live in the U.S. since late last year. The global launch brings new features like selfie optimization technology, VizID deep learning technology for analyzing skin from selfies and synaptic technology for searching millions of combinations of products to narrow in on a personalized regimen.

Dive Insight:

Olay Skin Advisor exemplifies one way brands can leverage artificial intelligence and other advanced technology to analyze significantly greater volumes of data and provide more personalized and valuable digital services. Beauty shoppers want personalized solutions, but they can feel overwhelmed by having to pick the right product by themselves out of the numerous options on the shelf. By leveraging the convenience of taking a selfie with a mobile phone and pairing it will deep learning, Olay is able to streamline the experience of finding the best products for different skin types.

For marketers, the challenge with AI is in figuring out how to use this new data in new ways to uncover insights about their audiences. For example, Skin Advisor is based on Olay’s research that browsing the shelf is the number one purchase influencer for women, yet one third of women do not find what they are looking for via this method. The brand then figured out how it could leverage AI to address that unmet need.

The payoff for marketers is that, when done well, AI-driven solutions can help consumers experience brands in personalized, valuable ways that have the potential to drive sales and loyalty.