Karolina Orgal is paid media senior manager at cosmetics multinational Estée Lauder Companies in U.K. and Ireland, where she spearheads data-driven marketing strategies. This includes an ongoing partnership with media agency Brainlabs to identify demand for beauty products on Google Shopping.
Modern beauty trends change in an instant — and are more consumer-led than ever before. New brands are flourishing, ingredients have become key search terms, and a YouTube tutorial can create demand overnight.
It’s a thrilling space to be in, but it also means we need to be incredibly agile and responsive. At Estée Lauder Companies, we have a huge advantage: a diverse portfolio of more than 20 brands and a product inventory of thousands. If the demand is there, we have the product to meet it.
But we can’t just act on hype alone. Working with our media agency, Brainlabs, we turned to Google Merchant Center. Accessing its shopping insights via Comparison Shopping Services to monitor real-time changes in demand, and put our media spend behind winning products.
A new look for media planning
Historically, our product focus and media planning were often set months in advance based on past performance and hero products. That approach is still solid for brand building and TV advertising, but we knew a more nimble approach was vital for digital, especially Search innovations.
If we could tap quickly into emerging trends, showing up with the right product and message, we could meet our customers' needs more effectively.
“Google Merchant Center has improved reporting on trends across the competitive landscape,” says Jamie Girling, product and operations lead at Brainlabs. “It offers reports on all retailers selling a particular product, giving advertisers a holistic view of specific brands and product sales over time on Google Shopping.”
This data could help us make better decisions about which products to promote and how to allocate our budget, but with so much of it, we needed precision.
Brainlabs helped us create new reports within BigQuery, a cloud-based way of managing and analysing large datasets. Pulling relevant trends from Merchant Center, we could start to pull actionable insights from the data.
Insight 1: Meet the trends to unlock additional sales
Estée Lauder Double Wear is one of our most iconic and bestselling products. But looking at the top 100 foundation products on Google Shopping showed us further opportunities for growth.
While Double Wear was holding strong at No. 1, we saw a clear trend towards foundations with different benefits, such as those offering a more breathable, “cloud-skin” finish.
We broadened our ads strategy in response, using Performance Max to showcase both Double Wear and a wider range of foundation types, with variable assets addressing different consumer needs — like smooth “cloud-skin”:
We also refined our Search strategy to target specific keywords and concerns — like smooth skin and natural coverage — and direct users to relevant landing pages.
The result? A 38% year-on-year increase in our foundation sales across Google touchpoints, further solidifying our No. 1 position while increasing the number of Estée Lauder foundation products in the top 100.
Insight 2: Refresh star products to align with evolving trends
The moisturiser category has also been awash with vibrant new trends in recent years.
Clinique Moisture Surge has long been a bestselling moisturiser, but the category has been shifting towards more “skinification”-style products that offer multiple benefits. Our research with Google Merchant Center showed us that in 2023, five of the top 10 U.K. skincare products were moisturisers, but in 2024, that dropped to just one.
We know Moisture Surge is a fantastic product, but we needed to show how it aligned with skinification. We did this by revamping our non-brand search campaigns, highlighting the product’s ability to address different skincare needs like “preps for makeup” and “deep hydration”, as well as incorporating relevant keywords such as “hyaluronic acid” and “SPF”.
This meant we were addressing what consumers were specifically looking for, and it worked. We saw a 91% increase in revenue from paid search, and Moisture Surge’s popularity ranking increased by 4X in Google Shopping.
Insight 3: Put your attention where sales are — not where the hype is
Too Faced is one of our fun brands that’s relevant to a new generation of consumers. For that audience, social trends move fast, so we need to be agile and responsive.
Traditionally, viral moments are short lived. The key with Too Faced was identifying trends with staying power — those that weren’t just flashes in the pan but were influencing consumer buying behaviour. We used the data from Google Shopping to pinpoint one such trend: “latte makeup”, with its focus on warm, bronzey tones.
We then quickly aligned our product inventory and marketing campaigns, highlighting relevant Too Faced products — eyeshadow palettes, lipsticks, bronzers — in our Performance Max campaigns and other consumer touchpoints.
This agile approach paid off. We saw an 87% increase in revenue for Too Faced bronzers and a 28% uplift for eyeshadow palettes.
A data makeover for growth
We knew beauty trends move at a rapid pace, but seeing the speed at which they translate into sales across different categories and audiences was still a surprise. With real-time data from Merchant Center’s tools, we’re now equipped to make swift, informed investment decisions.
With Brainlabs, we’re now reviewing shifts in product relevance and consumer needs either daily or weekly. This allows us to stay strategic, tap into emerging trends, and keep shining a light on those hero products that beauty shoppers know and love.
Having the right data means we don’t just follow trends — we can anticipate them. For a fresh look at growth, it’s a marketing makeover I’d definitely recommend.
