L’Oreal seems to care and influence the communities so much. What programs and objectives does L’Oreal have for the communities?
With the communities we want to generate as much employment opportunities, as many employees as possible. Today we have 77 thousand employees and we think we can be 100 thousand but we can’t hire more people, but we can put in place systems to which beauty can help underprivileged people to have access to have an employment. And it will be done in different ways, we have this solidarity sourcing project, and like the one we have in Indonesia as well which is giving access to trainings in beauty professions to disadvantage people so they can find a job. You can be a hair dresser, make up artist, beautician, so we have develop curriculum training with all our experts, it is a very high standard of training like the one you can find in many country in private very expensive schools. It is open for free to people who are selected by NGOs who knows how to deal with these people, choose the right target for the country and in the end they can be a hair dresser by their own, or they can work in a salon, or they can work at home so it’s an easy way to generate skills and competences that open access to a job.
You had mention three objectives so far. What is the last objective?
The last objective is about sustainable consumption, and on this we are working in generating a product assessment tool so we can share the product information to consumers and we can start working this education issue to make them aware that they can chose a product that have this rate of much respect about the planet, the community and the environment or the other ones. It’s their choice and at least they are aware and every brand can also do an education to make them more aware of other choices.
Do you think being in a cosmetic industry gives a bigger challenge on how to incorporate better social impact for the communities?
It’s interesting because sometimes believe when we are in cosmetics in aspirational industry we can’t do much. In fact we have seen when we have launched this program; we have done a panel discussion with different industries, for example in car industry you have companies in car industry that are trying to sell non polluting cars. They are working so-so, and then they have luxury car company that sold the most powerful and beautiful car to their target which people want a car that are fast and beautiful. As a byproduct it was a green car but they never market it this way, they never market it this way because it was not the attribute that was the most important to their consumer. At the same time, marketing and creating the most beautiful and rapid car which is also green, they have generated a desirability for this product so its desirability for sustainable product. So we are looking at all this thing on how we can make sustainability desirable, because today we know that selling sustainability is not an attribute of interest to our consumer.
