It’s a good time to be a beauty brand, as millennials embrace technology and social media in unprecedented proportions.

Happy to step out of brick-and-mortar confines, beauty brands are experimenting with VR and AR in everything from customer service chatbots to 360-degree video.

Add to that, emerging from the social media ooze, “Influencers have greased the wheels of the beauty industry, providing trusted conduits between brands and customers as brand loyalty and faith in salespeople erodes, and ad blockers proliferate.”

According to , “The power of influencers is so great in the beauty business that a collaboration with a single YouTube personality — Jaclyn Hill — transformed the sleepy brand Becca into a hot commodity, leading to it being acquired by Estée Lauder.”

Major brands including P&G’s SKII, Laura Mercier, First Aid Beauty, L’Oreal, BareMinerals and MAC are all working with influencers–big and small–proffering a cardinal tool for make-up behavior (trying it on), and AR is a major boon.

L’Oreal partnered with Image Metrics on the virtual mirror Makeup Genius, which has drawn some 20 million users globally and led to AR apps Nail Genius and Essie Dressing.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.brandchannel.com