L’Oreal Spotlights Female-Led Digital Startups With NEXT Generation Awards
Seeks to Be Corporate Partner to Aid in Expansion
After creating an innovation fund last year, L’Oreal executives sought out digital-marketing startups for projects to use it with, only to find that companies it wanted to work with were often hard to identify — and that few were headed by women.
To address both issues, L’Oreal earlier this year launched its NEXT Generation Awards to honor five women leading groundbreaking digital-technology companies, assembling a judging panel including Arianna Huffington and Facebook VP-Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson. The first winners were honored July 17 in New York.
L’Oreal USA Chief Marketing Officer Marc Speichert has sought to create a “digitally focused company.” But in a meeting last year, executives realized “there’s definitely a different speed between what’s moving from the venture community vs. coming to us through our agencies,” said Rachel Weiss, VP-digital strategy and interactive marketing at L’Oreal…
“A lot of amazing startups out there aren’t ready yet to work with your agency but are looking for a corporate partner to help advise them and expand,” …