L’Oréal Asia has undertaken a six-month project tracking social media in a bid to discover micro-trends in eyes, lips and face as a way to educate product innovation in the region’s emerging markets, according to a report by WARC.com.

Tracking consumer data over half a year, L’Oréal looked at a total of 5.2 million social media posts in Indonesia, India and Thailand, from make-up addicts, with a strong focus on photo-sharing site Instagram.

Over the course of the trial, researchers were able to detect 28 micro-trends over a short six-week period, with a qualitative lens applied to the data, with tech analytics and image recognition tech utilised to confirm the trends.

Speaking at the Qual360 Conference, Singapore, Dr Anupama Wagh Koppar, Innovation Director for Hair (India and ASEAN) at L’Oréal Research & Innovation said, “(Social media is) a great place for stalking these smaller trends.
“It makes innovation far more actionable and agile, especially innovation which has to be short term and short life cycle innovation.”

She continued, “It’s about sniffing out and catching these little behaviours and little insights which can then become big.”

However, despite the focus on micro, shorter term trends, and their desirability for shorter term product innovation for events such as Chinese New Year, Koppar stated they shouldn’t replace innovation focused on longevity.

She said, “You have long-term ideas which are disruptive, and which happen once in ten years, honestly. But you also need these small ideas which can quickly pass through, so that shorter funnels help you be agile and be in the market quickly.”