Dive Brief:
- L'Oreal USA's NYX Professional Makeup brand and Samsung Electronics America partnered for a virtual reality (VR) makeup tutorial, enabling users to shop for makeup in a new way, per a joint press release.
- The VR experience includes makeup tutorials led by three beauty vloggers — Kristen Leanne, Mykie (also known as "Glam & Gore"), and Karen Sarahi Gonzales. It is available on the Samsung Gear headset with controller for Oculus. Users can choose products to learn more about and receive a special price for purchases.
- The VR experiences is called "Impossibly NYX Professional Makeup" and will be initially available in select NYX Professional Makeup stores on Dec. 18, then rolled out nationwide to the brand’s 42 retail locations over 2018.
Dive Insight:
With consumers increasingly shopping online, where they are often exposed to unique interactive experience, savvy brick-and-mortar retailers are looking for ways to bring digital technology into their stores in a way that makes sense for shoppers and enhance the retail experience. Beauty retailers such as MAC Cosmetics and now NYX are at the forefront of this trend.
While most industries and marketers are still trying to understand how immersive tech fits into their content strategies, the beauty industry has already embraced augmented reality and is now gaining ground in VR. The basic tech behind VR and augmented reality, such as mapping faces and making virtual changes to those images, is a perfect way to get around a time consuming and messy makeover while giving users an experience that closely approximates actually applying the makeup.
Creating a VR experience is also a natural fit for NYX Professional Makeup, which is a digitally-native brand that seeks to incorporate digital into everything it does, according to Mehdi Mehdi, VP of digital at NYX Professional Makeup, in the press release. The VR experience gives customers an unprecedented “level of immersion and proximity” to favorite beauty vloggers, Mehdi added.
