L’Oreal’s chief digital and marketing officer Asmita Dubey spent about 12 years of her working life in China when she joined the global beauty juggernaut in 2013 as the chief marketing officer for the colossal Asian market. What she saw first hand is modernizing and digitizing large populations. The experience she tells us was “insightful and very impactful” that gave her “…the profound understanding about the middle and the upper middle class of the world – their aspirations, their dreams…”
But before her over decade-long stint in China, Dubey, who hails from the state of Uttar Pradesh, had spent time in advertising in India at IPG-owned McCann Worldgroup. Her time in advertising gave her “a love for brands and brand building, and what it offers to consumers.”
After the China stint, in 2017 she moved with her family to L’Oreal’s headquarters as its chief digital officer for the consumer products division. Dubey’s rise to the highest marketing echelons of the world’s largest beauty company and one of the biggest advertisers, is a tale of “bets and balances”.
During an exclusive conversation with Storyboard18 recently, Dubey shared highlights of her journey and a learning from her own life:
“Everybody has their own individual journey. I took a lot of bets. You know, when one thinks about bets and balance in life, and I am in my mid 40s, and I live a full life, but a full life has its demand. You have work, you have children, you have aging parents. We have our partnerships and our personal growth. All of us want to have a good physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, personal development journey. But all of that comes exactly at the same time!
Read More: New epicenters of influence are growing: Asmita Dubey, L’Oreal global marketing chief
For me, it was less about balance. Of course, you create balance and you nurture yourself, but you take a lot of bets. So I moved to China very early on. I spent 12 years there. I moved from advertising to the world of beauty. I moved from Asia to Europe. With my children, surprisingly, I was quite okay to let them spend time on YouTube in a healthy way. That led them to a wealth of information out there because it’s also how you use technology. So you take those bets.
I think this generation of women is educated, empowered, independent, and very self assured. And I feel extremely happy to see them all around me.”