How Organic Intelligence helped L'Oréal shape the beauty store of the future

The challenge: 75 ideas, six weeks, one global recommendation

L'Oréal wanted to define the next generation of online-plus-offline (O+O) beauty retail. The team arrived with 75 ideas and six weeks until its annual global meeting.

The brief was complex. As a brand, not a retailer, L'Oréal needed recommendations that would win over retail partners, hold together globally while flexing locally, and get past internal bias. The team had already narrowed the list to 20 hypotheses but couldn't be sure they were the right ones.

The solution: AI-led discovery, then rapid testing

Basis built two bespoke datasets for L'Oréal, covering beauty conversations and retail signals, from millions of public data points across social platforms, news, forums and e-commerce reviews. Our Organic Intelligence team codified the client's 75 ideas, then ran 373 AI queries across the data to find patterns and connections people would likely miss. The discovery stage took 48 hours.

The approach combined:

1. 86 additional ideas surfaced by AI, filtered for brand fit and strategic relevance
2. Rapid quantitative testing to rank initiatives by their potential to drive footfall and spend
3. Pressure-testing of the finalists with retailers
4. KPI-alignment workshops, storyboarding and stakeholder-specific reporting

The impact: Three of the five winners came from AI

The 75 starting ideas were cut to 11 priority concepts, and four new initiatives from Organic Intelligence took the shortlist to 15. In testing, three of the five winning initiatives came from AI-led discovery, ideas nobody in the business had proposed.

The work delivered:

1. Retailer-ready recommendations and seller stories
2. A shared global view of priorities, with room for local adaptation
3. Initiatives optimized for both shopper and retailer
4. A faster rollout, so local teams could act sooner