In New York, Los Angeles, and across the country, fearless women are sporting new hair colors and styles, leading us to ponder if new hair trends are emerging or if they are just fads.

The marketing team at L’Oréal Paris was tasked with developing a new hair color product and wondered if they should do anything about these exciting new hairstyles seen on the red carpet, online, and in the press.  How could L’Oréal Paris leverage Social Media to pull research and push interesting content to market the new product?

First things first – the marketing team at L’Oréal needed to determine which hairstyles were trends and which were fads. Which of the above hairstyles do you think are trends versus fads?

Our research, via social media listening, indicates that women are inspired by these hair styles and will try them out at home or in the salon.  The Ombre hairstyle was the most popular and can be considered more of a trend than fad.  L’Oréal took this valuable insight into consideration and developed a new hair coloring product for women who wanted to try the Ombre look at home.

Photo Source: https://www.lorealparisusa.com/products/hair-color/products/ombre/feria-wild-ombre.aspx?shade=wild-ombre-o60-medium-to-dark-brown

L’Oréal’s next challenge was how to leverage social media to push interesting content and market their new product?

The marketing landscape is constantly evolving and it is no longer enough to promote a product by itself.  Brands must utilize content marketing and leverage social media to tell a story.  If research indicates that more people are trying the unicorn hairstyles, for example, L’Oréal should act quickly and push interesting content showing how to achieve these looks right at home, by using L’Oréal’s products.  Partnering with digital influencers on instagram can help L’Oréal produce storytelling content.

Which of these hairstyles do you think are trends, which will last for generations?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.