My paean to L’Oreal

When we were young girls and ladies growing up all over the country,  a beauty company from France, named L’Oreal, was growing up right along with us. I remember my mom’s hairdresser, Mario, using L’Oreal to  cover her grays. I thought, ‘I’ll never go through all that!’ I remember the first time time I splurged to buy Lancome skin cream in the sixties (I had no idea at the time that it was owned by the hair color company). And I remember loving a perfume in the seventies  called  Anais Anais by Cacherel (another L’Oreal brand.)

Now, I have my hair colored with Matrix (yes, L’Oreal), I use Kerastase shampoo (yep, L’Oreal) and Kiehl’s hand cream (you guessed it!) What I love about L’Oreal, besides its products, is how much O’Loreal loves me. Me, as in FOF woman. L’Oreal has never deserted us. It was with us when we were growing into young women and now it’s with us as we go through our fabulous fifties and stupendous sixties. Its SkinCeuticals skin care line, for example, was created to help restore radiance to our skin and  protect it from environmental damage and serious conditions like melanoma. My dad died of melanoma, so I understand the importance of protecting my skin from this deadly cancer. (I’ve been using SkinCeuticals CE Ferulic for almost two weeks and I swear I feel it working. It was in the L’Oreal gift bag at the Beauty Bash.)

While other giant beauty companies pay lip service to FOFs, L’Oreal sends us strong and positive messages by using Diane Keaton and Andie McDowell to represent its brand image and consistently introducing innovative products to help us look as fabulous as ever.  L’Oreal knows how powerful and intelligent we are and will continue to be for years to come.

There’s another reason j’adore L’Oreal: It believes FOF is a great platform for many of its brands to connect with all of us in the digital era. It kicked off its partnership with us at our recent FOF Beauty Bash, where stylists, experts and educators from L’Oreal Paris, Matrix and SkinCeuticals offered “hair-apy, ” skin and makeup sessions to help us solve our most challenging haircare problems and improve the overall health and appearance of our skin.

L’Oreal executives know it isn’t the only beauty company on the block, and that we have a world of choices when it comes to what we put on our faces and in our hair. That’s why it’s not planning to sit back and rest on its laurels as almost-the-biggest-beauty-company in the world. It has identified FOF women–and men–as its two most important strategic consumer targets in the next decade.

“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of women 55 to 64 years old  is expected to jump 31 percent by 2015 and the number of women 65 to 74 will grow by 36.5 percent,” said Jorge Cosano, the man who has been charged with leading L’Oreal’s effort with FOFs. “Our partnership with with FabOverFifty gives us the opportunity to start the conversation with these women, so we can understand them and their needs and what they expect beauty brands to deliver.”

I love it when someone with good taste compliments the way I’m dressed, when a food guru loves a meal I cooked or when an intelligent person thinks I have something on the ball.  I couldn’t think of a greater compliment to FOF than when Jorge decided to have L’Oreal partner with us. I’d say that makes him–and L’Oreal–pretty smart themselves.