March 2020, the world entered a lockdown. All L’Oréal Paris shoots were cancelled. As salons across the globe closed their doors, the demand for at-home hair color was quickly on the rise. But without a film, L’Oréal Paris had to find a way to communicate on their at-home coloring solution, Excellence Crème, its perfect solution for grey roots. And the client was ambitious: it challenged the agency to develop new material that could attract new consumers, women who had never tried at-home coloring system before or those who had been let down by previous attempts by convincing them L’Oréal Paris could make the process was easy and the result as perfect as a visit to their hairdresser’s.

L’Oréal Paris’s most popular spokesperson, Eva Longoria, is not only an actress but also a director. So, for the first time ever, a brand released a global, digital campaign made by one person entirely at home and entirely by herself. For the first time ever, a spokesperson intimately shared her real greys on camera and colored her hair by herself. This one-woman crew in her own bathroom connected with women on a real and intimate level, showing them that greys are normal, and the solution is easy.

The success of the operation lies on Eva Longoria’s popularity. As L’Oréal Paris’ most loved spokesperson, she used her reach, through her owned social media to both endorse and get the message out. She has been the main protagonist both as an actor and director to spread the message and demonstrated an unprecedented level of initimacy that would resonate with all women struggling to find a way to cover their greys amidst a lockdown. A first in the industry, it inspired competitors to follow suit: Madison Reed released the same campaign with Terri Hatcher.

To produce the campaign, the agency mailed 2 smartphones, equipped with microphones and 4 boxes of Excellence Crème hair color to Eva Longoria's home in the US. She shot the campaign from the comfort of her bathroom under the supervision of the creative team remotely from Paris. It took a total of ten days to organize and finalize the shoot. Following her shoot, the very next day, post-production was launched. Over the course of the next 20 days, all stakeholders, including Eva, liaised to align on the edits and work through the campaign's ecosystem. The long version of the film was then first released on Longoria's own Instagram account. All L'Oréal Paris markets who were scheduled to run the film then had access to the material in order to release it according to their initial media plan.

The campaign had generated over 817M impressions in free media kicking off with 300K impresssions in the US in 24h. It achieved a social reach that counts itself in millions.

The campaign was first laucnhed on Instagram: firstly on Eva Longoria's account with 560K views and then L'Oréal Paris's Global account with 535K views. This had a direct impact on the sales as Excellence Crème finished 2020 at +13.3% vs. a market at +4.5%.