Estée Lauder Companies Expands AI Partnership with Google Cloud

Google Cloud and The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (ELC) have expanded their strategic partnership to pioneer new uses of generative AI across ELC's brand sites as part of its mission to transform the luxury digital experience. ELC was an early collaborator in the beauty industry to tap Google Cloud to accelerate its technology strategy. Through this partnership, ELC and Google Cloud will collaboratively explore AI-powered solutions to better understand consumer sentiment, inform R&D efforts, and translate the magic of prestige beauty brands into best-in-class, high-touch digital experiences, the companies announced.

“At The Estée Lauder Companies, we aim to delight consumers with transformative products and services. Through our collaboration with Google Cloud, we are creating high-touch, personalized experiences online that our consumers expect from every interaction with our brands,” said Gibu Thomas, EVP online, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. “By working with Google Cloud's generative AI technologies, our data science teams are unlocking new ways to serve our consumers.”

The announcement builds on on multi-year partnership between the two companies in which ELC has worked with its development partner, Eviden, to deploy a data analytics platform across marketing, sales, and operations. Using Google Cloud technologies, ELC has been able to consolidate its data into a single environment to better understand consumer intent and tailor consumer experiences for 20-plus brands (including Estée Lauder, Clinique, Tom Ford Beauty, and more) across more than 40 countries. With Google Cloud's retail search and recommendations AI solutions, ELC has created personalized experiences for consumers across its websites to increase consumer satisfaction, create new cross-selling opportunities and optimize customer lifetime value.

Google Cloud's gen AI capabilities will power real-time monitoring of consumer sentiment and feedback, allowing ELC to proactively address consumer concerns, respond to external trends, and ultimately improve consumer experiences. ELC is also developing new gen AI business applications on Google Cloud's AI platform, Vertex AI, to streamline operations and simplify business workflows to drive down operating costs while creating new opportunities for productivity. ELC is also using PaLM 2, Google's large language model (LLM), to more completely understand consumer sentiment on brand channels like social media, call center operations and more, the companies announced.

“The beauty market is undergoing a significant transition, with heightened consumer expectations, ever-changing trends, and a shift to personalization,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. “Our work with The Estée Lauder Companies to build a foundational data platform is now helping drive new generative AI use cases that will transform the consumer experience and the beauty industry overall.”