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Ninety-year-old Lancôme is having a comeback year.
Isabelle [Belle] Carramaschi, Lancôme’s svp of marketing, put it blunty: “The brand was struggling.”
In 2025, it has reclaimed relevance with an aggressive, celebrity-forward and culturally savvy approach to marketing designed to speak to women across generations.
“We kind of lost our identity — the sophistication, what made Lancôme so unique — because [we were] lost in trying to [follow the] trends,” Carramaschi said. “We’re always seeking to share best practices [across] brands — but you get so much rich data, [and] the risk is that you forget who you are, or you go after trends, or you go after the latest shiny toy.”
She knew Lancôme needed a different tack.
“The mood was, ‘Let’s throw away the handbooks,'” she said. “What was very special was recognizing what Lancôme is. Relevance is not you becoming someone else; relevance is taking the best features of the Lancôme brand and bringing [them] to life in a way that’s relevant. I think that was the big turnaround.”
Carramaschi has been with the brand for a little over a year, but has worked at L’Oréal for over 13 years. Before joining Lancôme, she was on the Kiehl’s team.
Today, Carramaschi said, “We are about this French, high aesthetic look; we’re not [about the] boldest looks. We are not the Coachella brand, and that’s OK. We are a mom’s brand. That can be a cool, hip mom, but we are a mom brand, and we’re proud of it.”
In May, the brand’s campaign for its Juicy Tube lip glosses resonated with millennials, who grew up as fans of the iconic product. And though stars like Paris Hilton, Hilary Duff and Christina Milian may hold particularly strong memories for millennials who used the product as teens in the early aughts, Carramaschi avoided the obvious, instead taking an ageless approach to the campaign: It centered on reminiscing about one’s first kiss. The campaign garnered over 300 million views across TikTok and Instagram, and the brand’s influencer seeding generated 2,400 pieces of user-generated content.
Then, in September, Lancôme introduced the “Menopause is hot” campaign, fronted by Kim Cattrall and Halle Berry. The campaign centered on the brand’s Teint Idole Ultra Wear foundation, positioning it as a menopause-proof pick, thanks to its sweat-, humidity- and transfer-resistant properties.
Carramaschi called Lancôme a feminist brand, but said it had been negligent in showing up for “women’s key moments.”
“I really felt that we had a role to play” in empowering women around menopause, she said. “And it was very special to talk about our product’s benefit, because it is a functionality women actually need.”
Ultimately, Carramaschi said, “The values of Lancôme have not changed. [The brand is] about being feminine, being empowering for women and bringing about societal change for women. But how we bring them to life today has changed, because we’re empowering women in today’s age.”
