Max Factor’s foray into digital retail: beautiful idea, lacklustre execution

Although online sales of beauty products are rapidly growing, more than 90% of cosmetics purchases still take place in bricks and mortar stores. Perhaps this isn’t surprising in a category where sensory factors such as texture, fragrance, colour and finish are so important in the decision-making process.

But it’s also a category where inspiration and education are important triggers to purchase, and these are two areas where online is arguably streets ahead of the typical high street shopping experience.

So it’s become popular for beauty brands and retailers to introduce digital elements to the store experience, in an attempt to replicate some of the benefits of online. Sephora’s touchscreen fragrance finder and L’Oreal’s Make-Up Genius app are good examples of digital tools enhancing product discovery and selection.

The latest brand to have a stab at it is Max Factor, having recently launched a content platform they’re describing as the “future of retail” — which allows a shopper to use their phone to scan any physical Max Factor product to unlock additional content, information, reviews, and guidance.

Sounds neat, and in principle, the strategy is sound: using a shopper’s own device to answer a genuine need (to be inspired and aided at fixture where space is limited), with the added bonus of prompting interaction with the product.

But I think there is a flaw in the execution. The platform uses Blippar, an app with relatively low penetration, rather than an app that the shopper is likely to already have in their pocket. This means she has to download the app before she can engage with the content: a significant barrier.

To make the experience more seamless, Max Factor could have considered partnering with a retailer such as Boots, to offer the functionality through their own popular app. Or better still, use Shazam’s visual recognition functionality instead of less-popular Blippar’s (Google Play Store indicates that the former has more than twenty times as many downloads as the latter). This would not only have eliminated a key barrier to interaction, but also illustrated a closer affinity with the target audience.

Ultimately, if a brand chooses to introduce technology to the shopping experience, it must make the process easier, faster, and frictionless — which is where Max Factor and Blippar’s effort falls down.