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In June 2018, L’Oréal announced it would launch a livestreamed AR beauty service via L’Oréal-owned beauty brand NYX’s app. Users of the app will be able to book live streamed sessions with real beauty assistants: the service is similar to being at a physical beauty counter, with makeup being shown and ‘tested’ in augmented reality instead of in person. The service follows L’Oréal’s acquisition of AR startup Modiface, which was released last year.

When it comes to seamlessly melding the physical world with the digital one, the beauty industry is going all out: from Alibaba’s AR makeup mirrors to Estée Lauder’s AR makeup artist training program – and now this.

L’Oréal’s AR offering blends two trends we’ve been tracking for a while now: M2P (Mentor-to-Protegé) and SHOPSTREAMING (one of our Five Asian Trends for 2018, but growing fast in the rest of the world!). And by doing so L’Oreal is offering a customer experience that’s both empowering and convenient. Now customers don’t have to go to a physical store to learn from an expert: they can livestream one to their phone from wherever they like, while still being able to see how various products and colors will look like on them.

AR has been over-hyped but – thanks largely to Pokémon Go, Snapchat and Apple’s ARKit – we’re finally seeing the technology being used to create useful and meaningful experiences for consumers. One number to get support from your CFO: the market size of the AR & VR industry is forecast to projected to skyrocket to USD 209.2 billion by the year 2022 (although these ‘forecasts’ are meaningless in our opinion...who knows, and where on earth did the 0.2 billion come from?!).

But whether that number is correct or not, one thing should be clear: the way people see and experience the world around them is quite literally changing! That’s HUGE! How will you make sure that you’re bringing your customers information that matters to them, at the right time and in the right contexts?

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