Asmita Dubey of L’Oréal
Are You Seizing What is Starting?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 256: Asmita Dubey
Here’s a question. Are you seizing what is starting?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to help their leaders discover what they’re capable of, and then to maximize their impact. Helping them to unlock their own creativity, as well as the creativity of the people around them.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This episode is the third in a series of conversations I’m having in partnership with the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
For the weeks leading up to Cannes, we’re focusing our study of leadership through a single lens. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
Are we moving fast enough? Are we going far enough? Is this an opportunity to fundamentally redesign the creative industries, or should we adjust and iterate, slowly and carefully? Do we follow the puck or skate to where it’s going? There are opportunities and risks around every corner.
This episode is a conversation with Asmita Dubey. She is the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer of L’Oréal.
Her company is the fourth largest advertiser in the world. They are a 115-year old business that owns 37 brands.
It’s easy to see the world presumptively. To presume that big companies always move more cautiously, that they are slower to see, to adopt, and to adapt to disruptions in the eco system around them.
But if your company believes, as Asmita frames it, in seizing what is starting, if you operate from a foot forward perspective, if you are relentlessly curious and consistently committed to the belief that creativity and innovation are all that separates you from your competitors, then the size of your company does not matter.
Big or small. Old or new. You can seize what is starting, and define the future on your terms.
“We are a very creative culture per se, and we are very, very, inspired by creativity around us. So that is who we are. And in that culture of seizing what is starting and these pillars of innovation, we feel that this new technology is a new frontier of technology. But it is just bringing creativity and technology closer together.”
At the end of the series, I’ll offer some thoughts on what we’ve heard and learned, and where we might go from here.
In the meantime, thanks for joining us.
Here’s Asmita Dubey.
Charles (02:50):
Asmita, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Asmita Dubey (02:54):
Well, thank you for inviting me, and what a nice name, Fearless Creativity.
Charles (02:59):
Thank you. Yes, it seems to resonate. Let me start here. What's your relationship with AI on a personal basis? How do you see AI?
Asmita Dubey (03:08):
I see AI as a new kind of relationship. A new kind of relationship, just personally, yeah. And then a new kind of relationship with our consumer, you know, which is based on technology, data, and AI. So, for beauty consumers, it's absolutely a new kind of relationship. And our mantra is “Beauty for each, powered by Beauty Tech.” So for us, AI brings great opportunities in bringing a more personalized, more inclusive, a more sustainable beauty to everyone in the world.
Charles (03:44):
And do you think as AI starts to really get integrated into the creative industries, are we going to be able to separate AI's, what we might describe as reflection—because what it really does is it takes all of our data and then reflects it back to us in very sophisticated ways. But do you think we're going to be able to separate that from what we might describe as human creativity, human creation?
Asmita Dubey (04:06):
What we have been experimenting and exploring, with AI, like a lot of players around us. And what we see across our exploration, is that AI is augmenting human creativity. So it's an opportunity to spark creativity among people who are creative people and you know, everybody else because there's a democratization of AI today. It was a subject that was with mathematicians and with researchers, and today it's become a everyday conversation for people everywhere around the world. And in that sense, with that democratization, it can spark creativity amongst so many, so many people.
Charles (04:49):
So you see it as a catalyst for creativity.
Asmita Dubey (04:53):
Yes.
Charles (04:54):
And given that, how do you think it improves the connection between brands and consumers? What role does AI play in creating a tighter relationship between brands and consumers?
Asmita Dubey (05:05):
I will just step back here just for a minute to share this with you. Because, you know, AI is at the heart of our Beauty Tech transformation, you know, since it's in inception. We coined the term, the word “BeautyTech,” and we started like doing this BeautyTech transformation in 2018. So we have developed a particular expertise around AI over these years, to the extent that we have, overall in our group, I would say that we have almost 8,000 people who are in digital tech and data, and more than 1000 in data alone. So we do multiple things, and multiple value creation with AI, and how brands and consumers come closer together. I'll tell you the first one is, that we create beauty innovations. We can astonish our consumers with trailblazing innovations because using AI, we can do better e-formulation for skincare, for haircare products.
We can empower our consumers with the elevated services as we move from product to services. And the kind of services that we use in beauty are to guide them. So, there's a pink lipstick, and how does this pink lipstick look on me? I have a particular skin type, and I want to diagnose that skin, you know, so to guide, to diagnose. To predict what will happen 15 days later once I use a certain product, and what is the effect going to be? Or to coach them. And here we are bringing new generation of BeautyTech services, which also use generative AI. So I spoke about innovation, I spoke about elevating consumers with beauty services.
And then AI and BeautyTech also help us to augment beauty consumer journeys, because we are moving to a AI-powered media era, where all the platforms are bringing AI solutions, and with those AI solutions, we are able to speak to our consumers with more relevance. And then with generative AI, we are at a new frontier of technology. And here, you asked me this question before, and I feel, and I see this everywhere around me, that creativity and technology are coming closer together, like never before. And that's a wonderful opportunity for even deeper consumer engagement in beauty.
Charles (07:35):
So, your experience actually with AI is that it gives you the ability to scale on an individual basis, that you can literally reach millions of people through what seemed to them to be entirely personal experiences. Is that right?
Asmita Dubey (07:50):
That is the point on AI-powered media. We reach billions of consumers because we are the fourth largest advertiser in the world. But what we do see with what the platform's called embedded AI solutions, so embedded AI solutions help us to reach our consumers, both effectively and efficiently.
Charles (08:10):
Yeah, I'm struck by your example of skin type, for instance, and the ability to be able to help people one by one at scale with something that is as intimate as that to them.. It's just an extraordinary evolution. I have to admit, I hadn't thought about that.
Asmita Dubey (08:23):
Okay, no, I can elaborate on that. You know, here we are talking about a combination of both AI and generative AI, yeah? So, we started with skin diagnosis. So our skin diagnosis is an offline device, yeah? As well as an online service. So it uses about 20,000 images, to represent the diversity of men and women around the world. And then the consumer, when it is an offline device, the consumer has to place their face on the device, and the device uses AI and is able to analyze and describe 19 different skin attributes, including clinical signs of aging. So we have deployed these kind of devices in a thousand outlets today, and across different brands like across, Lancome, Kiehl's, Prada. And it's an invaluable service to the consumer, because we see that those who have used this personalized diagnosis, 70% of them, on the point of sale, proceed to make a purchase.
And the service is also available online. So this is a skin diagnosis service, and absolutely, you're right, it is a more personalized experience. Then with generative AI, we are moving to a next generation of services where we are bringing coaching for each. I told you our mantra is “Beauty for each, powered by BeautyTech.” So we are bringing personalization, and now we are bringing coaching for each. And when I say coaching for each, 70% of beauty consumers, they feel overwhelmed by just the sheer number of products around them. So you may know people, they ask their friends, they search online, they watch videos, just to make sense of the number of products on shelf. So we launched Beauty Genius. Beauty Genius from L'Oréal, Paris. L'Oréal Paris is the number one beauty brand of the world.
And Beauty Genius is like a personal AI beauty assistant 24/7 in your pocket. And Beauty Genius uses a combination technologies. It uses generative AI, it uses AI per se, computer vision, color science, augmented reality. And it helps consumers make better choices because it's bringing three things we spoke about. The first one, personalized diagnosis, then personalized recommendation, product recommendation, product matching, but also routines to say, you can put this, and then you can put a moisturizer, and then it brings personalized q and a, personalized answers to questions that you may ask on beauty. But they could be very intimate questions, they could be about, hair fall or acne or fine lines, and then the service is based on so much data, that we are able to give those answers.
Charles (11:20):
One of the things about this I find fascinating, actually, is the fact that AI and generative AI, perhaps in particular, are presented to the world through the lens of, these might be a threat, right? We should not trust them. Don't trust your eyes anymore. We can't tell what's real anymore. That obviously is true, but what you are describing is a situation in which you are using the technology fundamentally to engender deeper trust with your consumers. I mean, you are making this more personalized, but you're also bringing them products that work better for them. And so, over time, they just lean harder and harder and harder into the experience they have engaging with your brands, because fundamentally, they feel like you understand who they are in a way that perhaps nobody ever has before, from a beauty standpoint. Is that a fair analysis?
Asmita Dubey (12:03):
Absolutely, no, it's a very fair description, and these are consumer facing services. So we are using AI to augment the services that we were already presenting to our beauty consumers, but now we can augment them with generative AI.
Charles (12:19):
So obviously, Cannes, sits at the intersection of the creative industries—marketing, advertising, technology and so on. Do you think that the industries as a whole are behaving in a way that reflects the speed of exponential growth in AI?
Asmita Dubey (12:33):
I see around us that brands are responding with unbounded creativity, that the pace of technology today is so fast, you know. And then consumer adoption of technologies is also very wide and large. And in that, the brands have to come and the brands have to respond, also, and I think they're responding with unbounded creativity. You see very creative renditions everywhere. If we speak about ourselves, we started with the subject of creativity, but to augment creativity, we created a generative AI beauty content lab. And we called it CreaTech, created with AI tech, CreaTech, or because technology is coming to creativity. So CreaTech. And CreaTech is our safe space of experimentation and exploration. We are still in a controlled experimentation phase now, and here, we are creating guardrails, because we have to think about it in terms of guardrails of content creation.
We are bringing together an ecosystem of partners. Some of them are very new, they were not there before, but then some of them are our traditional partners. And we are assessing service models to say, there is so much content need, what are going to be the service models for adoption at scale? And when I say that we are building guardrails, because you are asking me if we are moving fast or slow, but we have to move responsibly whichever way we move. And we have decided as a group that we know that beauty is an essential human need. We know that beauty is deeply personal, but beyond being an individual need, it is also deeply social. So we've decided that we will not use AI-generated face, hair, skin, or body to enhance the product benefit in our external communication.
So we would not use a synthetic face and say that there's a cream being put on a synthetic face, because creams are put on faces that are not synthetic. So that's the decision we have taken, and those are the kind of guardrails that I'm talking about, that, how are we going to use it? And that needs consideration, you know? And then we have been working with a lot of partners, like even the WPP, Nvidia Engine, Omniverse, as well as several large language models. I think we've tested more than 20 gen AI technologies—
Charles (15:05):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Asmita Dubey (15:05):
—in the last eight months, because, you know, you organize yourselves. We made the CreaTech lab, we started testing it. We have had dozens of workshops because we have 37 global brands. So to work with brands needs workshopping with the brands, looking at their current partners, making sure that the creative process is working well, getting a brief from them.
And with all of that, we have created more than a thousand images so far within the lab, and sometimes a lot of activation, e-commerce activation, and social images. And we are seeing with that, that we do hundreds of product images, and their backgrounds. We also imagine new codes of beauty, you know, that, how does beauty look like when you do a certain prompt? So if I want to show BeautyTech, what kind of prompts should I put? So we put “grid patterns, fashionable beauty, LED lights, skincare.” And then you see what comes out. And what comes out is a BeautyTech image.
We are also pioneering the development of brand custom models. With brand custom models, you're using deep learning techniques and large brand data sets, and bringing them together and training the gen AI Beauty Content lab with our brand codes and cues.
But all of that, we are at the moment testing and seeing, okay, that's why we call it a lab. Okay, what does this mean for us? How are we going to use this with guardrails, with the ecosystem? What kind of ecosystem are we going to work with? What would our agency do? What would be the IT architecture in such a large company if we were to start using our brand custom models and bringing it to the countries? You do it at the global level. What do you do at the zone or the country? How does it go to them? It's about technology, because technology is coming to creativity. We think about assessing, how are we going to scale it. When we scale it, what kind of efficiencies and efficacies do we see in the whole thing? So I think that the industry is gearing you up towards all these questions, you know, and how they need to transform while we perform. Because transformation is such that, yes, you have to keep transforming, but we also have to keep performing. So that is how we are approaching it.
Charles (17:24):
So the need for guardrails, as you've said, is critical, and in a company and a business is complicated and as large and as multifaceted as yours, absolutely essential. I imagine, given how long the company has been involved in AI, some of those developed organically, but at some point, I'm sure the company decided, we have to formalize these. How do you go about formalizing guardrails for a business that's as complicated as yours, with a technology that's moving as quickly as this one? What's the process look like by which you do that?
Asmita Dubey (17:53):
So we work with experts, both external experts and internal experts. To give you an example, beyond the creativity and the generative AI—you know, not using AI-generated face, skin, hair, or body for enhancing our product benefit—beyond that, we have established seven principles of trust for the AI. And I'll tell you what those seven principles are. The seven principles are about human oversight, that whatever the AI algorithms that we work with, we will work with a human oversight on it. It is about reliability and safety. It is about transparency and explain-ability. We should be able to explain what we are doing. It is about data protection and privacy, non-discrimination and fairness. We use 20,000 images to be able to create a skin diagnosis algorithm.
It's about sustainable AI and accountability in what we do. And we write them down, and we formalize it to say, okay, these are the seven principles of trustworthy AI. That is the foundation, it is the backdrop of everything that we do in terms of development, deployment, and use of AI. And of course, it also starts to position us on how we should be in the industry, you know? And sometimes you lead it and, you know, sometimes you look at the external experts there.
We already spoke about a very specific guardrail around use of generative AI. We spoke about trustworthy principles of AI in general. And then when we talk about our sense of responsibility and guardrails, and we are talking about the creative industry and advertising industry, I think it all comes together, also, because there are so many things going on, it comes together in responsible media and communication policies. And within that, we have to start incorporating this, whether it is responsible media and content, and what is our position. Data privacy, what is our position? marketing and children, what is our position? Generative AI, what is our position? All these have to start incorporating into things that we already knew that, yes, we have a guardrail, but then there are new things coming, so to incorporate it within. And we are doing that now, too, with all our brands.
Charles (20:14):
So given the kind of structure you've just described, and you have to have in place for business as complex as yours, obviously the power of human creativity is going to always be a fundamental business driver for you. And I read a survey that Dentsu, I think, had put together. They surveyed a number of CMOs who said that marketers still value human creativity. 75% of that particular group believed that AI will never fully replace the essence of human creativity. And 81% of the CMOs surveyed in that particular study said customers will be prepared to pay a premium for human created content. Is that reflective of how you see the line between human creativity and AI-generated creativity? Or where do you sit in that equation, in that tension?
Asmita Dubey (20:56):
We are a 115-year old company. We are going to turn 115 this year. And, for all these years, innovation has been in our DNA. And we say that we have three pillars of innovation: science, technology, and creativity. And the science, technology, and creativity, it is in the culture of the company. It is in the culture of the company to seize what is starting. We are a very creative culture per se, and we are very, very, inspired by creativity around us. So that is who we are. And in that culture of seizing what is starting and these pillars of innovation, we feel that this new technology is a new frontier of technology. But it is just bringing creativity and technology closer together.
So technology was impacting a lot of aspects of our lives, starting from the way we spend our free time on the mobile phones and social media, to the way we were driving, or to the way we get biomarkers and sensors and sleep and do sports and all of that. And here, the excitement in the industry is, that there is a field which was so qualitative, but it can be enhanced and augmented in some way. So I absolutely believe that, it is an augmentation. It is an augmentation because that is what we see over the last eight months. To get a beautiful image still needs a very strong creative direction. And that's why we are training and upskilling our marketeers on this, to say, what is prompts, and what kind of prompts work, to create a brand custom model needs the codes of the brands. So who is thinking about those codes of the brand?
We need differentiation, relevance, proximity, unique propositions. So those fundamentals are very much there. They're getting augmented by the technology. The third thing I want to say is, if you look at everything around us, the content needs in today's world have multiplied so many fold. We have so many platforms that need adapted content, multiple e-commerce platforms, multiple social platforms, very different formats, technical adaptation and variations of those format. Where to save all of this, how to retrieve it when you want to retrieve it back. If things can be automated, and technology can be used to automate content first, and then to augment content creation, to support content creation, it would be a great value for the industry.
Charles (23:38):
So I was talking to an agency leader a few weeks ago, about what it takes to launch a new product or a new service for a major advertiser. And they said they'd figured out that they had to produce something like a thousand different assets to support that. It used to be, you did a TV commercial, a radio spot, a billboard, right? Four or five things. Now it's a thousand different things. Is that consistent with your experience? Is that the kind of volume of asset you need to create?
Asmita Dubey (24:05):
We have 37 brands, and beauty is an offer-driven category. So we are bringing new products and innovation all the time. So for each new product, when you get into communicating that to the consumer, it's a whole launch pack, which is across platforms, across geographies. So we are talking about very high volume of content.
Charles (24:27):
I can only imagine. You touched on this a moment ago in terms of brand consistency and brand voice. And it strikes me that that is one area where this could be very powerful, where the technology could be really powerful, but it can also be hugely risky, right? Because part of the friction in the industry for years has been the fact that it costs money and takes time to create content. And so there was always time to think about, is this the right message? Is this the right format? Is this the right medium for this particular brand? As the speed of creation speeds up, how much consequence is that going to have in terms of how you manage your brands, and how you manage the brand agency relationship?
Asmita Dubey (25:07):
We have to together assess those service models, which comes to that point about, what is the service model? What is the scale of adoption? What is the roles that our current partners will play? And which roles will evolve there? And then what is the value creation that they will bring? So I think we have to go through that process, and in going through that process, see if there is any new ways of working, any optimization of what we do today, which we don't do tomorrow. So we are considering all of that. But I think the answer is more or less what I see and what I know, is that it does spark human creativity, but the best outputs are combination of human creativity and gen AI tools. There's technology coming to creativity. We want to embrace it, explore it, and make the most of the technology, but with guardrails, you know, with guardrails, with what it means for us.
Charles (26:07):
And in your best agency relationships, do you feel like they become the guardian of the brand? I mean, 30, 40 years ago, that's what agencies were particularly good at. They really understood the voice of the brand. They understood how the brand should show up. Over time, that relationship has changed, and it's now the brand, more often, that seems to control that. In your best agency relationships, where does the responsibility or the judgment for what is brand appropriate sit?
Asmita Dubey (27:34):
On both sides. Absolutely on both sides. And we are so proud of our very, very longstanding relationships with our number one beauty brand in the world, L'Oréal, Paris. We have a very deep relationship with the McCann Group. In fact, it was in 1971 in New York, that a woman copywriter, wrote the tag, the famous tagline, “Because you're worth it,” and we still use it. And so our relationships go very deep. And what is brand appropriate is a conversation that both sides have all the time.
It’s the same for Lancôme. I mean, Lancôme is, our brand partner is Publicis Group there, and their understanding of luxury, and what are the Lancôme brand codes, and how should we use them and augment them? We have a very symbolic rose Agora, the Lancôme rose. So we wanted to reinterpret the Lancôme rose using generative AI, because does it come up with something different? So we started prompting, “white neon lights, soft shadows, pink blush,” and the rose kept on evolving. So you go through that process, but again, that process is very much in the brand codes. So we can have fun with the technology.
Charles (27:54):
So the financial structure of the industry has evolved over the last 25, 30 years, so that more and more agencies are charging almost by the hour for labor. And this feels like a moment where the industry could go through a significant shift. Obviously, outside the creative industries, you're seeing a lot of companies benefiting from AI by reducing head count and being able to increase profitability, which until recently has never been a model that existed in the business world. Do you see the industry needing to go through any kind of shift from, in terms of how the economic structure of the industry works?
Asmita Dubey (28:32):
I think we are assessing those service models. We are assessing those service models jointly and within our teams. To give you an example: when platformization and digitalization of media happened, then there was this whole service model of internal trading desk that came up in media. Because you wanted, the proximity was there and the speed was there, and one could scale the buying of media, because it was not just about the negotiation. And over the last decade, the models co-existed. Should you have an internal trading desk or an external trading desk, as content needs increase, you know. Even before generative AI, we have been producing so much social and e-commerce content. If you look at this in markets like North Asia, in China, or even in the South Asia, in a market like Indonesia, consumers are watching live streaming.
And from there, they're going on to purchase on TikTok and all. So, as marketeers, they have to produce now live streaming content with influencers, but also affiliates who demonstrate the product, sell the product online, and social commerce. That is a new kind of content need the service models around that, you know, companies are working through it. Should we produce it ourselves because it's a real time sale, or should we franchise it, or should we take the support of an external party? And again, they coexist so far, you know, that both models coexist. So I feel value creation will evolve on both sides.
Charles (30:13):
Does this feel like an evolution in the industry, or a revolution? In general, I mean?
Asmita Dubey (30:23):
There's a culture moment for AI today. AI is having its culture moment. And it's having a culture moment because everybody's talking about it. It is even being referenced, you know, on those popular TV shows like South Park. So because it is having a culture moment, therefore you see all this, therefore there's a language emerging around it, and there's a speculation, and the language is the right one. People are saying AI-generated art, AI-generated music, AI-assisted writing, and this is a very new language. And at the same time, like any cultural phenomena, there is both fear and fascination. It comes with both the plus and the minus. You're assessing, oh, what is going to happen and what is not going to happen? And we are in a controlled experimentation phase, so we are working with it, we are seizing the opportunity, and we want to create value out of it.
Charles (31:20):
Controlled experimentation seems to me to be the perfect mindset to bring to this, because there is structure and order and discipline, but there is also possibility. And I think there are too few companies that actually invest, almost emotionally, through that mindset, that they are overt about the framework that they're applying, just as you've described it. So from a practical basis, as you look at the industry's evolution and AI becomes, as you've already described, more and more incorporated into organizational design and structure and workflows, how are we going to identify the most valuable human talent in the context of all of that? How do you separate, this is where we need human talent, this is where AI can play a more powerful, more meaningful role?
Asmita Dubey (32:05):
There are two parts to that answer. The first part of the answer is that we have to keep developing talent, and to keep developing talent means to keep upskilling people, you know, for what is there today, but what is coming tomorrow, as well. And we are doing a lot of upskilling of our teams, great focus. I think there is 175,000 hours of training this year on tech data and AI. So there is that focus on talent and upskill—skill, upskill, reskill, skill, upskill, reskill, the talent of the group. And, of course, with strong beauty material and deep beauty expertise, but also bringing in all the transformation and from beauty to BeautyTech, you know, from “Beauty for all,” to, “Beauty for each,” and how to do that for our consumers. And then the best talent shine.
Charles (33:00):
So is that changing the way you develop your talent supply chain? What I'm really curious about is whether you think, as the need for different kinds of talent appears in the industry, because of the way that you are integrating AI and the kind of opportunities that AI creates, do you think it gives the industry a broader ability to go out and look for talent in places that they typically haven't in the past?
Asmita Dubey (33:24):
No, no, sure, that's, I mean, that's a very thoughtful question, because it's something I feel, that we need a new generation of marketeers, you know?
Charles (33:33):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Asmita Dubey (33:34):
And a new generation of marketeers. Again, everything that we've been speaking about for the last 30 minutes, who can use, and not that they don't use today, but there's a combination of creativity and technology of math and magic, of left brain and right brain, of driving performance in the short term, and short-term ROI, but also building brands in the long term. So it's a great moment to bring all of that together, and to develop this new generation of marketeers. It's a very exciting time for marketing.
Charles (34:06):
Who do you think leads that evolution? Is that a brand agency marriage across the industries? Is that a brand agency marriage? Is that brands getting together and saying, we want to pull talent from different places? Is that agencies? Where do you think the leadership of that comes from?
Asmita Dubey (34:23):
It should be in all of those places, right? It would automatically be in all of that places, because it's like asking a decade ago that, who should do digital transformation?
Charles (34:37):
That's true.
Asmita Dubey (34:38):
The question is, who should not.
Charles (34:45):
Looking at everything you've described and everything you're experiencing, how do we need to adapt our leadership of talent, as the industry evolves? What's going to be different about how you lead talent and creative talent?
Asmita Dubey (35:00):
A lot of these statements could be speculative, but I believe that marketing, it's a combination of math and magic, what we just spoke about. We should find ways that the math is taken care of, you know? So it can be automated, it can be optimized, it is done. And then it leaves a lot of time for magic, for the talent to focus on. And that's where the best of marketing happens, because you automate, you bring technology to it. You use technology for everything, all the value that it can create, you know. Even to augment creativity, but it augments the creativity. So there is the human creativity part of it. And it create that space for it even more, to create more space for magic.
Charles (35:53):
So is it fair to say that the time, the energy, the emotional energy as much as anything else, when you get the math part right, that the time and energy and emotional dynamic of leadership has to be focused on the human side?
Asmita Dubey (36:07):
It is about using both but for what. It's not like you leave it all to something else or somebody else. You use it, and you maximize it, and you make sure that it is optimized at its best possible level. But the prerequisites of doing good AI is good data, so one has to be data driven. And to give you an example, we are becoming more data driven in our ANP optimization. So we are bringing tools that maximize the short-term ROI with market mix modeling and all, but we are very much focusing in those tools, and we call them B.E.T. IQ—B.E.T.s is our Beauty Engagement Touch Points. But we say no, but in this tool we have to bring in a long-term brand equity view. So it's that balance of the two, which will create, I think, a great new period for both creativity and technology for marketeers.
Charles (37:02):
Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about helping people to be confident enough in their ability to leverage data and to be able to, right? To be able to recognize, to your point, is the math right, right? We have to take care of that, while also maintaining a deeply humanistic perspective of, here are people who are stepping into new roles all the time, whose lives are being changed because they're dealing with technology in a brand new way, who we have to make sure we still recognize them and create an environment in which they can thrive and in which they can succeed. And that's not a straightforward combination, right? I mean, those two sisters don't always sit comfortably within the same person or the same organization. Organizations can tilt in one side or the other. And it sounds like, it feels like, listening to you today that one of the things that L'Oréal has some particularly well is, you found the right way to balance that, you're comfortable with both sides. You're in a very human-oriented business, and you are driven, powered by technology and by data, and you're comfortable with that marriage, but that's not going to be true for everybody.
Asmita Dubey (38:07):
And when you say BeautyTech, it is that marriage, right?
Charles (38:09):
And you're navigating the tension of that all the time, but I'm struck by the fact that there are companies and people for whom that marriage is not always that easy. As you experience that, as you benefit from that, how would you advise leaders in other industries and other businesses to become comfortable with the tension between those two pieces?
Asmita Dubey (38:27):
Yeah, I mean, if I were to just elaborate on that thought, and specific to your question, when we say that the talent has to be this, when there's a new generation of marketeers, it is a statement for the talent pool. And it is a statement to say, we balance that. It is not a mandate for individuals. I think individuals always have the choice to focus on any of the faculties that they most feel comfortable with, or develop or not. But as an industry, if you see the industry would be a combination, and the marketeers and the leaders would be a combination of the two.
Charles (39:11):
Last two questions for you. As you look at the future of AI, what are you optimistic about?
Asmita Dubey (39:17):
I'm very optimistic about the thing. We just had a New York Times debate at River Tech. We finished the River Tech week last week. And New York Times put this fantastic topic there to say, will AI reveal the best of humanity? Great question, great debate by great executives. And then there was a jury, and, you know, we were trying to, and the jury was neutral. And while the jury was neutral, I think that I felt there were three, you know, there were two or three observations that I saw both sides debating.
So both sides were debating, and they were debating the, just the other side of the coin. The first that AI is having a culture moment, you know, it can do this, it can change democracies, it can, well, you know, it could do almost everything, in the debate. So the fact that AI is having a culture moment. The fact that as one perceives that AI rules the world, the world needs to bring AI rules. And both sides were debating that in different ways. And the third one was that, in the end, technology has the power to change our lives. So how do you want to change it? So my optimism comes on all three of these points, and then goes, okay, what do you do with it?
Charles (40:41):
And last question for you. As you look at the future with AI, what are you afraid of?
Asmita Dubey (40:47):
The two sides of the coin. (laughs) The debate is the right one.
Charles (40:54):
I really want to thank you for coming on the show. I'm really struck by the thoughtfulness, the balance that you are bringing to this, apparently every day, I think, within the context of the business that you're operating. It's a remarkably dynamic moment. And I think the way that you bring urgency, but also perspective, in my experience so far, is actually rare. And so, obviously you've got a lot of experience within the context of AI. I think that the way you're going about this feels like we could all learn a lot from the perspective that you bring. So thank you for coming on.
Asmita Dubey (41:27):
Oh, I appreciate your very generous feedback. But yes, we are really committed to a sense of responsibility for each.
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