Nearly five decades after launching with a brow bar and a wink in San Francisco, Benefit Cosmetics is still in the business of disruption. Its latest move is using artificial intelligence to evolve the customer experience while keeping the playful tone that made the brand iconic.
In May 2023, Benefit’s global CEO restructured the brand’s marketing operations and launched a new division called Connected Consumer. The goal is to create an end-to-end customer journey that is powered by data and AI but unmistakably Benefit. Instead of installing a tech leader, the company tapped a longtime brand marketer to lead the initiative.
“I’m a marketer, not a data person,” said Lou Bennett, Benefit’s global vp of customer strategy at Shoptalk Europe. “That was intentional. Our job is to bring AI to life in a way that’s not robotic.”
Benefit operates in 62 countries with 8,000 retail doors, 5,000 brow beauty experts and 132 social media profiles. It receives around 12 billion customer inquiries annually. While it has always had the data, the brand hasn’t always had the tools to act on it in real time. That is starting to change.
In December 2024, Benefit launched a conversational commerce pilot using WhatsApp. The tool was powered by generative AI, which refers to artificial intelligence that can generate text, images or insights in a human-like way. Built by the Benefit team, the assistant was fine-tuned by Benefit’s Connected Consumer team using brand-approved scripts, tone guidelines and real customer interaction data. The chatbot could then speak in Benefit’s distinctive tone and deliver personalized shopping guidance and product discovery through chat.
“We transformed a chat into a relationship,” said Bennett. “The results were exciting, but more than that, they unlocked internal buy-in. Suddenly, every gm [of ours] wanted to roll it out in their region.”
Over 6,000 customer conversations took place during the 10-week test. Many of those chats led to in-store visits, sparking demand from regional teams and accelerating executive-level support for AI adoption. According to the company, it’s using insights from the pilot to build the next wave of programs focused on retention, conversion and lifetime value.
The pilot fits into a broader LVMH Beauty data strategy, introduced by Chief Data and AI Officer Julie De Moyer, which encourages brands to innovate in ways that align with their unique identities. The framework includes five steps: dream it, grab it, hack it, own it and chime with it. Benefit is currently in the “own it” phase, which focuses on scaling successful pilots and integrating tools across teams.
According to De Moyers presentation at the Shoptalk Europe panel, the emphasis for Benefit is now on making AI accessible and usable throughout the organization. To do that, Benefit has created a suite of data-informed products, including dashboards and scorecards that allow store managers, CRM leads and marketers to make informed decisions without relying on data analysts. It has extended AI training across all levels, from store staffers to the C-suite.
“We’ve gone from static business intelligence reports to predictive models to generative AI tools,” said De Moyer during the panel. “And the key is usability. Tools are only as valuable as the people using them.”
LVMH Beauty has developed more than 50 machine learning algorithms that are shared across its brands. These include recommendation engines, customer segmentation tools and demand forecasting models. They are accessed through Maia, LVMH’s proprietary generative AI platform that provides secure, brand-specific access to AI-powered content and insights. Maia now supports over 5,000 monthly users across the group.
Benefit is also using AI to make its operations more sustainable. Forecasting models are helping the brand reduce excess inventory and cut down on waste, contributing to LVMH’s broader environmental targets, according to de Moyer.
But at the center of it all is trust. “Luxury is about long-term relationships,” said De Moyer. “So protecting consumer privacy, minimizing bias and building responsible AI from the ground up is essential.”
Perhaps the most unexpected part of Benefit’s tech-focused evolution is how understated it has been. There are no gimmicks or glossy AI mascots. Instead, the focus is on embedding technology into the brand’s DNA in ways that support the teams engaging with customers every day.
“If you’re not the person standing in front of the customer, you’re serving the person who is,” said Bennett. “That’s how we see democratizing data: giving every team the tools to create a better experience.”
Next, the brand plans to expand the pilot across markets and continue working with OpenAI and internal partners to evolve its tools. For Bennett, success won’t be measured by how futuristic the tech is but by how familiar it feels.
“We don’t want a chatbot that sounds like every other brand,” she said. “We want AI that sounds like Benefit. Warm, witty and human. Because that’s what keeps people coming back.”
Benefit Cosmetics, as a subsidiary of LVMH, does not publicly disclose its standalone financial statements. However, estimates suggest that the brand’s annual revenue is approximately $1.5 billion as of 2023.
