L’Oréal’s strategy of universalisation is tied to its mission—“beauty for all.” If there is one thing that L’Oréal has discovered about women worldwide, it is that they want to feel good about themselves. And how they feel is inherently connected to how they care for themselves and their appearance. This universal characteristic holds true regardless of ethnicity, culture, age, or socioeconomic status. For this reason, “beauty for all” has L’Oréal focused on providing the ultimate in luxury beauty for the masses.

While the Paris-based giant has been peddling cosmetics for more than a century, the relevance of its mission became more apparent than ever in the 1970s. The company launched Superior Preference hair color with an advertisement that presented a woman’s point of view and ended with four words—“Because I’m Worth It.” From the moment the ad hit, those words struck a chord with women. Here was a brand with a message about what a woman thought—about her self-confidence, her decisions, her style.

Originally just a tagline, those four words have transcended their intended purpose and have even become part of the social fabric. They have been written into global language, used by a woman for any situation where she wants to stand up for herself and proclaim her self-worth. Today, 80 percent of women worldwide recognize and respond to this phrase in a positive and powerful way. And today, “Because I’m Worth It” is translated into action every day by L’Oréal.

To achieve “beauty for all” globally, L’Oréal’s starts with a corps of highly multicultural managers. The company is famous for building global brand teams around managers who have deep backgrounds in several cultures. Unlike many global corporations that set up an international structure composed of autonomous subsidiaries, divisions, and management teams in different parts of the world, L’Oréal knew that such a structure would not provide the balance between standardization and adaptation that is critical in today’s cosmetics industry. Instead, the company built global teams around individual managers with deep backgrounds in multiple cultures, allowing them to switch easily among them.

Able to see things from multiple perspectives, a truly multicultural manager can think at any moment as if he or she were German, American, or Chinese—or all three at once. The Indian-American-French manager of a team that launched a men’s skin care line in Southeast Asia explains: “I have a stock of references in different languages: English, Hindi, and French. I read books in three different languages, meet people from different countries, eat food from different [cultures], and so on. I cannot think about things one way.”

For example, a French-Irish-Cambodian manager working on skin care noticed that, in Europe, face creams tended to be either “tinted” (and considered as makeup) or “lifting” (and considered as skin care). But in Asia, many face creams combined the two traits. Recognizing the growing popularity of Asian beauty trends in Europe, this manager guided his team in developing a tinted cream with lifting effects for the French market, a product that proved to be highly successful. As the global environment has created a greater need for this type of knowledge integration across cultures, L’Oréal’s strategic use of multicultural managers provides built-in shortcuts. This management structure has given L’Oréal a critical competitive advantage in new product development.

L’Oréal digs deep to understand what beauty means to consumers in different parts of the world. It outspends all major competitors on R&D, painstakingly researching beauty and personal care behaviors unique to specific locales. One of the goals of its global R&D efforts is to gain an in-depth understanding of the behaviors of women and men around the world with respect to beautifying and taking care of themselves. L’Oréal explains the need for this worldwide approach to beauty rituals:

How many minutes does a Chinese woman devote to her morning beauty routine? How do people wash their hair in Bangkok? How many brush strokes does a Japanese woman or a French woman use to apply mascara? These beauty rituals, repeated thousands of times, are inherently cultural. Passed on by tradition, influenced by climate and by local living conditions, they strive to achieve an ideal of perfection that is different from one country and from one continent to the next. They provide an incredibly rich source of information for L’Oréal Research. Behind these rituals, there are physiological realities: fine, straight and short eyelashes cannot be made up the same way as thick, curled, and long lashes.

To facilitate this major R&D effort, L’Oréal has set up centers all over the world, developing a science of local observation it calls “geocosmetics.” This science is fueled with insight gained through in-home visits as well as observations made in “bathroom laboratories.” Equipped with high-tech gadgetry, these labs enable teams to study consumer behavior around the world.

L’Oréal’s R&D program produces very precise information about regional rituals of hygiene and beauty as well as local conditions and constraints that affect the use of products, such as humidity and temperature. These insights feed R&D teams in the process of creating products for local markets. Combined with insights from global locations, such products can be adapted for multiple markets.

For example, consider Elséve Total Reparação, a hair care line initially developed at L’Oréal’s labs in Rio de Janeiro to address specific hair problems described by Brazilian women. In Brazil, more than half of all women have long, dry, dull, and very curly hair, resulting from the humid Brazilian climate, exposure to the sun, frequent washing, and smoothing and straightening treatments. Elséve Total Reparação was an immediate hit in Brazil, and L’Oréal quickly rolled it out to other South American and Latin American markets. The company then tracked down other global locales with climate characteristics and hair care rituals similar to those faced by Brazilian women. Subsequently, L’Oréal launched the brand as Elséve Total Repair in numerous European, Indian, and other South East Asian markets, where consumers greeted it with similar enthusiasm.

Such adaptation often plays out across multiple L’Oréal brands—which takes us back to that Korean skin beautifier sold under a French brand in Australia mentioned in the opening paragraph. Blemish balm cream (BB cream) was originally created by dermatologists in Korea to soothe skin and hide minor blemishes. It quickly became a high-flying Korean brand. However, applying their deep knowledge of skin colors, treatments, and makeup worldwide, L’Oréal researchers developed a successful new-generation BB cream adapted to conditions and skin colors in U.S. markets (where BB stands for “beauty balm”) and launched it under the Maybelline New York brand. Still not finished, L’Oréal created yet another local version for Europe under the Garnier brand, which it also introduced in other world markets, including Australia.

L’Oréal’s global R&D efforts have produced a “geography of skin colors”—a proprietary mapping of the world that makes it possible to adapt cosmetic products to the needs of women around the world. In a similar manner, the company has expanded the traditional classification of three hair types (African, Asian, and European) to eight different categories, based on a scientific measurement of curl characteristics that includes the diameter of the curvature, the curl index, the number of waves, and tendrils.

L’Oréal doesn’t just adapt its product formulations globally. It also adapts brand positioning and marketing to international needs and expectations. For example, more than 20 years ago, the company bought stodgy American makeup producer Maybelline. To reinvigorate and globalize the brand, it moved the unit’s headquarters from Tennessee to New York City and added “New York” to the label. The resulting urban, street-smart, Big Apple image played well globally with the midprice positioning of the workaday makeup brand. The makeover soon earned Maybelline a 20 percent market share in its category in Western Europe. The young urban positioning also hit the mark in Asia, where few women realized that the trendy “New York” Maybelline brand belonged to French cosmetics giant L’Oréal.

By acquiring brands such as Maybelline, L’Oréal also gains brands that have immediate recognition and products already made for a given market. This gives the company an immediate point of entry to a market at a cost that is lower than building a brand from scratch. Such is the case with Yue-Sai Cosmetics, a Chinese company that uses herbs in its creams. L’Oréal bought it a decade ago. Sales of Yue-Sai products increased by 20 percent last year.

L’Oréal and its brands are truly global, and its approach to providing luxury beauty for the masses is working. Total revenues have grown by 30 percent over the past four years. Even as the Western European market growth has slowed and Brazil is in a slump, L’Oréal’s revenues climbed by 12 percent in the past year alone. In the United States, L’Oréal is growing even as key rival Unilever has seen its revenue decline and is losing market share.

L’Oréal’s huge international success comes from achieving a global–local balance that adapts and differentiates brands in local markets while optimizing their impact across global markets. L’Oréal is one of few companies that has achieved both local brand responsiveness and global brand integration. “We respect the differences among our consumers around the world,” says L’Oréal’s CEO. “We have global brands, but we need to adapt them to local needs.” When a former CEO once addressed a UNESCO conference, nobody batted an eyelid when he described L’Oréal as “The United Nations of Beauty.”