Turning Digital Intent into Travel Retail Recovery
Context
Industry: Beauty / Travel Retail / Performance Media
The Problem:
Estée Lauder Companies’ travel retail business in China was facing structural headwinds, not just a temporary slowdown. FY25 Q2 showed a 12% decline in skincare sales across APAC, while consumer behavior had already shifted decisively toward digital-first commerce.
In China, 79% of beauty purchases now happen online, and 43% of consumers actively browse and buy before ever entering a duty-free store. The shelf was no longer the place where discovery happened. It had become the final checkpoint in a journey largely decided upstream.
For ELC, waiting for foot traffic to recover was no longer a viable strategy. The brand needed to create purchase intent before the traveler even boarded the plane, then convert that intent into measurable retail performance.
Solution
We built a new operating model for travel retail growth, connecting data, media, and conversion into one coordinated system designed to move demand from digital intent to physical purchase.
- Triple-Partite Growth Model: Established a first-of-its-kind collaboration between China Duty Free Group, Estée Lauder Companies, and Helios, aligning retail intelligence, media investment, and operational execution under one shared performance framework.
- 1st-Party Data Activation: Leveraged China Duty Free Group’s direct sales data and category insights to sharpen targeting, improve efficiency, and identify high-potential traveler segments with greater precision.
- WeChat RTB Performance Engine: Activated a real-time bidding ecosystem on WeChat built specifically for conversion, using dynamic creative optimization, daily bidding adjustments, and responsive targeting strategies.
- Intent Manufacturing Upstream: Repositioned media from passive awareness to active demand generation, reaching travelers during high-intent pre-departure moments before they arrived in-store.
- Continuous Optimization Loop: Ran the campaign as a living system, constantly refining creative, audience performance, and spend allocation to maximize return and sales contribution over time.