L’Oréal Paris incorporated data into all steps of Destination Beauty’s creative process to transform the channel into an informative online beauty destination visited and trusted by Millennial women worldwide. Allowing data to drive every step of the channel’s creative planning, production, and publishing process was a risk for L’Oréal Paris. But ultimately it drove the innovative strategy that allowed L’Oréal Paris to significantly increase Destination Beauty's video view counts, new subscriber sign-ups, and overall audience engagements (Likes, comments, shares).

Data helped L’Oréal Paris understand the evolving YouTube beauty ecosystem, and what changes needed to be made to Destination Beauty to better resonate with its target audience. Data gathered around L’Oréal Paris' target audience and their viewing preferences and habits on YouTube was the deciding factor in:

• Selecting which content creators to work with

• Planning what specific topics should be covered in upcoming videos

• Mapping out a new video release calendar correlating to key beauty events and holidays

L’Oréal Paris’ primary goal for Destination Beauty was to increase the channel’s subscriber numbers. Because subscribers automatically receive new videos and any associated e-commerce links and brand messaging in their inboxes, data shows that YouTube subscribers frequently convert to brand customers. The brand also wanted to remain competitive with Bobbi Brown's "I Love Makeup channel."

Three years after its founding, the Destination Beauty channel had amassed a total of 30,000 subscribers (low within the beauty space). But just four months after switching to a data-first strategy, Destination Beauty’s subscriber base had grown to over 85,000—a 283% increase in subscribers. The rapid growth and retention of subscribers (viewers who voluntarily opt in to receive emails about each new Destination Video released) was a clear indication that female millennial viewers connected with and enjoyed Destination Beauty’s new content strategy.

L’Oréal Paris wanted its Destination Beauty channel to become a “one-stop, all-inclusive YouTube beauty channel co-curated with the most influential roster of beauty-obsessed, expert content creators.” By analyzing data about its target audience’s likes, dislikes, viewing schedules, and content preferences, L’Oréal Paris successfully transformed Destination Beauty from an underperforming collection of curated content into a highly relevant and popular YouTube beauty destination.

From July 2014 onwards, every Destination Beauty channel decision made by L’Oréal Paris was based on real data collected from YouTube’s beauty community and analyzed with a Destination Beauty-specific lens. The channel’s creative process was driven entirely by data which detailed its target audience’s YouTube preferences. L’Oréal Paris utilized its newfound knowledge of its consumer base to:

• Hire specific content creators proven to appeal to its target female audience of “Millennial Mavens.”

• Contract talent from two tiers of YouTube makeup creators: All-Star talent (1 million+ subscribers) and Rising Stars (lower subscriber-count channels that show strong promise based on view count and subscriber growth). This two-tiered approach was implemented to bring the existing audience of each established creator to Destination Beauty, while also attracting new channel subscribers.

• Create videos with less overt branding, based on audience feedback and comments.

• Identify what content topics would be most popular with the channel’s audience, and what day, time, and season channel subscribers would prefer to view a video on that topic. Content data analysis provided strategy recommendations as specific as publishing a braids video on a Thursday afternoon in the summer.

• Publish season-specific content to YouTube 1.5 months ahead of the normal calendar, as data showed YouTube viewers consistently began searching for seasonal videos early.

• Publish one new video and one new playlist on Monday and Thursday each week to maximize views and engagement.