PARIS – L’Oréal’s new corporate campaign promoting refills, in sync with World Refill Day on Tuesday, has expanded in scope.
Called #JoinTheRefillMovement, it is a cross-divisional, multibrand, multicategory and multichannel activation which includes ambassadors, retailers and employees, as well.
The campaign spans 28 products – encompassing the skin care, fragrance, makeup and hair care segments – from 18 brands in all four of the group’s divisions. This is the biggest refill movement push to take place since the campaign’s launch by L’Oréal Luxe in 2024.
L’Oréal believes it has a key role to play in ensuring consumers adopt refills. The group “is trying to bring even more scale into this refill movement that we animate,” said Antoine Vanlaeys, L’Oréal chief operations officer.
In one year, the company has increased by 34 percent the number of product formats that are refillable. “We take the opportunity of the renovation or the launch of our new products to make them by design refillable,” he continued.
Last year marked the first time #JoinTheRefillMovement was companywide.
The group works on an industrial scale sourcing, manufacturing and delivering the more than 7 billion products it puts on the market yearly. Creating refills impacts its whole value chain.
A large swath of L’Oréal’s products are refillable today. They include Prada lipstick, Lancôme Absolue Longevity MD cream and L’Oréal Professionnel Metal Detox Shampoo. All of the company’s major fragrance ranges are refillable.
The creation of Vichy product refills.
Photo by Eric Larrayadieu/Courtesy of L’Oréal
“Behind this refill movement for us in operations is making sure that we can offer to all our brands – and therefore to all our consumers – the right refill formats and the possibility to go for refills,” Vanlaeys said. “It takes a village to do that.”
“We’ve been intentional since 2019 about growing refills,” explained Blanca Juti, chief corporate affairs and engagement officer at L’Oréal, adding the number of refillable product references has grown 3.7 times since then.
She said the refill campaign “entices consumers to join the movement, to feel part of it.”
Refills are one of the many ways the group decreases its packaging, as part of the L’Oréal for the Future program that sets out sustainability goals. Its aims include continuing to reduce the use of packaging, replacing packaging with more eco-friendly materials, recycling and promoting circularity where consumption takes place.
Juti said refills have a significant impact and can engage consumers, who want to be more sustainable.
From a development perspective, refills must be both sustainable and desirable. Key is to preserve the brand experience totally, Vanlaeys said, giving as an example Kérastase’s Elixir Ultime.
Kérastase’s Elixir Ultime
Photo by CAPA Pictures/Courtesy of L’Oréal
“It’s a very luxurious product, extremely elegant, made of glass. But inside it is refillable,” he said. “It takes a lot of expertise to be able to develop this combo…[and] to make sure that this is done without any compromise on the desirability of the product.”
Packaging for L’Oréal Paris Elvive, the number-one hair care brand worldwide, was developed to be 20 percent lighter than before, with zero impact on the consumer experience, according to Vanlaeys. The packaging is 100 percent post-consumer recycled, while the product’s 250-ml. refill pouch contains 60 percent less packaging material.
There are some barriers to adopting refills for consumers, including lack of awareness. Forty-two percent of beauty buyers do not know refills exist.
“We have to tackle that,” Juti said. “We have to increase [refills’] availability on retail shelves.”
A campaign like #JoinTheRefillMovement helps build knowledge. “Because we do it with the retailers,” she continued. “We do it online, offline, so it’s really a good opportunity for them also to see the benefits that they get themselves and that they can pass on to their consumer.”
Another barrier is that people might think refills are messy or difficult. “You have to make it easy,” Juti said.
Consumers can learn that refills are beneficial to planet Earth. “You can give them a financial incentive – that’s what we try to do,” Juti said.
She underlined it’s clear the campaign last year touched consumers’ hearts, since while it was running L’Oréal noted seven-times more social-media engagement than usual.
“We normally have very high engagement, but it went up,” Juti said.
Through #JoinTheRefillMovement advertising, consumers glean knowledge about how much material they are saving through refills. When a consumer purchases a 100-ml. refill of the Yves Saint Laurent Libre eau de parfum rather than two 50-ml. edps, for example, there is a savings of 58 percent on glass, 100 percent on metal, 59 percent on plastic and 42 percent on cardboard.
As consumers use more refills, savings rise.
“What we’re really hoping is to drive this and make it bigger,” Juti said of the movement. “That’s why we’re very excited that we have more products and more brands this year.”
The brands craft their tutorials in their own language, spirit and identity about how to refill. They align with digital and brick-and-mortar retailers, too.
“We saw last year that we had a very significant increase in [refill sales] as a consequence,” Juti said.
It is all for the greater good.
“We are driving this agenda, but we also make sure we engage our full ecosystem, because to do it at scale you need to embrace end-to-end the full value chain of packaging,” Vanlaeys said, adding the hope is that other industries will help propel the movement further.
