AI-adtech and luxury beauty brands

Dr Fazal Ali AI is not adding a new lay­er of ad­ver­tis­ing to the lux­u­ry beau­ty and per­son­al care mar­ket. It is rewrit­ing every lay­er. The West In­dies needs to re­build its ad­ver­tis­ing stack around AI, span­ning ML-led bid­ding sys­tems and iden­ti­ty graphs, trans­former-based rec­om­men­da­tion en­gines, and agen­tic ad­ver­tis­ing in­fra­struc­ture. This will en­able the WI to map re­gion­al tal­ent and MSMEs that care­ful­ly use on­ly pure, unadul­ter­at­ed, rain­for­est-sourced in­gre­di­ents in their beau­ty prod­ucts. AI is com­press­ing the en­tire ad­ver­tis­ing stack. The AI-AdTech in­dus­try is mov­ing from frag­ment­ed op­ti­mi­sa­tion to­ward au­tonomous or­ches­tra­tion. Open ecolo­gies are struc­tural­ly more com­pet­i­tive be­cause AI erodes the his­tor­i­cal ad­van­tages that walled gar­dens have cul­ti­vat­ed. Com­merce sig­nal is the new moat. Edgy plat­forms own trans­ac­tion in­tel­li­gence, not just im­pres­sions. The AI-AdTech in­dus­try has moved from cam­paign man­age­ment to AI-led busi­ness out­come op­ti­mi­sa­tion. First-par­ty da­ta and AI-en­abled mon­eti­sa­tion in­fra­struc­ture are strate­gic as­sets. The WI must con­front colo­nial pat­terns of serv­ing the glob­al AdTech mar­ket. It must build and own the prod­uct iden­ti­ties that pow­er the next phase of AI-AdTech de­signed for Screen Economies. AI can en­able in­dige­nous open ecosys­tems to re­cov­er lost sig­nal qual­i­ty, aug­ment tar­get­ing pre­ci­sion, am­pli­fy at­tri­bu­tion ac­cu­ra­cy, scale quick-com­merce (Q-Com­merce) in­tel­li­gence, au­to­mate da­ta-dri­ven in­no­va­tion and out­come op­ti­mi­sa­tion, and build in­ter­op­er­a­ble AI-na­tive in­fra­struc­ture. The Age of AI will en­able con­ver­sa­tion­al in­ter­faces, agen­tic com­merce, AI-na­tive ap­pli­ca­tions, and hy­per-per­son­alised ex­pe­ri­ences to cre­ate en­tire­ly new ad­ver­tis­ing sur­faces, open ecosys­tems with ro­bust da­ta-lake in­fra­struc­ture, and ex­e­cu­tion speeds in Q-Com­merce that can po­si­tion 'pure lux­u­ry brands' from the WI. A sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of beau­ty and per­son­al care shop­pers are Gen Zers, who dis­cov­er the prod­ucts they buy through the Tik­Tok ef­fect. They are spend­ing rough­ly twice as much on per­son­al care as mil­len­ni­als. The Beau­ty and Per­son­al Care mar­ket is rac­ing. Q-com­merce is fast be­com­ing the chan­nel that de­cides who wins wal­let share. Q-com­merce fo­cus­es on quick de­liv­ery us­ing ad­vanced lo­gis­tics al­go­rithms and small ful­fil­ment cen­tres. In re­cent months, beau­ty brands have at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant glob­al cap­i­tal through ac­qui­si­tions and pur­chas­es of ma­jor­i­ty stakes. Lega­cy brands have seen ex­plo­sive growth in the beau­ty in­dus­try in Ko­rea, the UAE, and Brazil. In these economies, the beau­ty in­dus­try is ex­pect­ed to near­ly dou­ble in size by the end of this decade and grow at twice the rate of the coun­try's GDP and the broad­er re­tail mar­ket. Per capi­ta in­come has crossed a thresh­old be­yond which dis­cre­tionary spend­ing is grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly. This in­crease in av­er­age house­hold earn­ings is pro­vid­ing a tail­wind to growth. In for­mer plan­ta­tion economies, there is a his­tor­i­cal trend to un­der­spend on beau­ty. How­ev­er, the in­ter­net and greater spend­ing pow­er have opened ac­cess to Kiko Mi­lano. The com­ing wave of AI-AdTech pen­e­tra­tion in tier-one, tier-two, and tier-three towns aims to de­liv­er spe­cif­ic 'pure' beau­ty and per­son­al care prod­ucts. A beau­ty mar­ket full of syn­thet­ic prod­ucts is opt­ing to ac­quire MSMEs that use ul­tra-pure in­gre­di­ents and process­es. Con­vinc­ing cus­tomers to use pure, tra­di­tion­al for­mu­la­tions is not easy in a world awash with cheap syn­thet­ic in­gre­di­ents. Cheap, low-qual­i­ty in­gre­di­ents are abun­dant, re­duc­ing pro­duc­tion costs. The new beau­ty brands are not com­pro­mis­ing on in­gre­di­ent qual­i­ty to re­duce pro­duc­tion costs, and Gen Zers are re­fus­ing to com­pro­mise their well­ness and well­be­ing. We are at an in­flex­ion point. What was once an as­pi­ra­tional cat­e­go­ry has now be­come a dai­ly ex­pres­sion of self-care. Hu­mans crave clean in­gre­di­ents that are so pure that some­one could al­most eat them. Brands now pro­duce their in­gre­di­ents in-house rather than im­port­ing them. They build ecolo­gies in ham­lets where both sourc­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing oc­cur. From sourc­ing raw ma­te­ri­als to man­u­fac­tur­ing the prod­uct, every­thing hap­pens in-house. They have al­so re­vived old for­mu­la­tions that are na­tive to their com­mu­ni­ties, which re­main un­cod­i­fied and part of their oral his­to­ries. These com­pa­nies build their brands of­fline be­fore they go on­line and avoid the fran­chise mod­el. They be­gin with chains of of­fline, com­pa­ny-owned stores. They build the brand by em­ploy­ing the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, with most of the in­gre­di­ents they use grown and pro­duced lo­cal­ly. They open small guilds, en­cour­ag­ing non-metro com­mu­ni­ties to work and be sup­port­ed by in­come gen­er­at­ed by pro­duc­tion units that cu­rate in­dige­nous in­gre­di­ents. The com­ing wave will be dri­ven by these niche brands in­no­vat­ing with pure in­gre­di­ents. Once in Ce­dros, body lo­tions were made with vir­gin co­conut oil and pure de­si ghee. The ghee was churned from fresh cow's milk, not im­port­ed com­mer­cial but­ter. The cows roamed freely be­neath co­conut palms near the Los Gal­los rocks along Colum­bus Beach. The ghee was then aged with aro­mat­ic plants, mixed in clay pots, and buried be­neath Banyan trees near the 'chowk' up­on which the shim­mer­ing, hand-craft­ed mod­el mau­soleums, or Hosay Ta­jas, were built. It is this hid­den knowl­edge and search for 'pu­ri­ty' in of­fline pro­duc­tion that is at­tract­ing ac­qui­si­tions by be­he­moths like L'Oréal and Es­tée Laud­er ahead of the Q-Com­merce fren­zy on­line. Dr Fazal Ali com­plet­ed his Mas­ter's in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He was a Com­mon­wealth Schol­ar who at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Hugh­es Hall; the Provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go; the act­ing Pres­i­dent of UTT; and the Chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is the Pres­i­dent of NI­HERST and an ex­ter­nal ser­vices con­sul­tant with the IDB.