Estée Lauder has just made one of the most interesting marketing hires in beauty this year.

In July 2025, The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) announced that Aude Gandon will become its first Chief Digital & Marketing Officer (CDMO), a newly created role effective 1 August 2025. She reports directly to President and CEO Stéphane de La Faverie and joins the company’s Executive Team.

Her remit is big. ELC’s release says Gandon will lead the transformation of the company’s digital, marketing and media ecosystem, shape end-to-end strategies across its portfolio of prestige beauty brands, and oversee global digital commerce. Trade coverage adds that she will also be responsible for precision marketing, creative operations, consumer and category insights, omnichannel media strategy, store design and visual merchandising, and global consumer care.

In other words: almost every lever that touches the beauty consumer journey, from media to merchandising.

Who is Aude Gandon

Gandon joins from Nestlé, where she served as Global Chief Marketing Officer, leading digital transformation across 188 markets and more than 2,000 brands. She introduced new operating models, launched global content studios and built strategic partnerships with platforms such as Google, Meta and Amazon.

Before Nestlé, she held senior leadership roles at Google and at Publicis Worldwide, giving her a mix of platform, advertiser and agency experience that is very on-trend for large consumer brands trying to modernise their marketing.

Why this matters for loyalty and beauty shoppers

Estée Lauder has been under pressure, with sales challenged by weaker spending from Chinese consumers and a slower pivot to digital than some competitors. Its new “Beauty Reimagined” strategy is all about using AI, data and omnichannel experiences to retain loyal customers while bringing in younger shoppers.

Putting a single executive in charge of digital, marketing, media and e-commerce is a clear sign that ELC wants to behave less like a classic brand house and more like a connected, data-driven beauty platform. For loyalty, a few things stand out:

• One view of the consumer journey across social, DTC sites, retail counters and travel retail.

• The ability to tie precision marketing and AI-driven recommendations directly to repeat purchase and basket growth.

• Store design, merchandising and service being shaped alongside digital, not as a separate world.

My read: if Gandon can bring even part of the Nestlé-scale playbook into prestige beauty, you’ll see Estée Lauder brands lean harder into personalised journeys, always-on content and experiences that keep customers inside the ELC ecosystem rather than drifting to the next viral product on TikTok.