Role: Strategist & Creative Concepting
Problem
The D&AD 2026 brief challenged us to expand L'Oréal Paris's "I'm Worth It" platform with global resonance and modern relevance. After research, I realized, in a world where L'Oréal calls itself a digital-first company, up to 90% of women in low-income countries have no internet access — making the digital footprint most beauty campaigns celebrate completely out of reach for the women who need self-worth messaging most. The goal was to bridge that contradiction authentically, without reducing underrepresented women to a cause.
The Process
Research revealed a tension at the heart of the brief: digital access was simultaneously L'Oréal's brand pillar and a barrier to the campaign's audience. Early concepting explored social-media-first executions before identifying the logical paradox — you can't reach women who don’t have internet through the internet. The team pivoted to a physical-first, digitized-by-L'Oréal model. Concepts iterated from a digital archive alone, to mobile beauty stations as the access bridge, landing on a two-part system: the "You're Worth It" Beauty Stations (mobile units bringing product and video booth access to remote communities) feeding directly into The Digital Footprint Women's Archive (a permanent, searchable platform housing submitted stories). The Infallible Longwear Lipstick anchored the product tie-in — both the lipstick and the story leave a mark that doesn't erase.
The Execution & Impact
Conceptualized and written collaboratively across a team of three, with responsibilities split across strategy, copywriting, and visual design. The campaign addressed all three of the brief's key brand pillars — authenticity, opportunity, and community — with a mechanic that worked regardless of the user's internet access. The beauty stations solved the access paradox by bringing L'Oréal's digital infrastructure to underserved communities rather than expecting them to come to it. The archive's #MyDigitalFootprint hashtag created a parallel social campaign for women who are already online, unifying both audiences under one platform.
Challenges & Lessons
This campaign presented a central creative challenge early on: we couldn't run a digital-access campaign digitally and expect it to reach the women who lack digital access. Identifying that paradox mid-process and rebuilding the mechanic around it — bringing L'Oréal's digital infrastructure to underserved communities rather than waiting for them to arrive — was the most significant pivot the project required. Balancing L'Oréal's distinctly Parisian brand aesthetic against a globally inclusive message added another layer of tension that pushed us to be more intentional with every visual and copy decision. The biggest lesson was that the strongest version of any idea usually lives on the other side of the hardest feedback — the feedback received about disconnection was disheartening, but it was that note which made the campaign work.