Estée Lauder’s Esther Uhalte Discusses How Global Media Strategy Is Changing for Luxury Brands

Esther Uhalte is Executive Director of Global Media for the Estée Lauder brand and is responsible for helping drive media strategy, effectiveness and efficiency in top markets around the world, in collaboration with the regional and local teams. "In a nutshell," she says, "my role is to help our local marketing teams make smarter media investments." Again, she emphasizes, "smarter media investments, not necessarily more investments."

 

As a result, she's noticing significant changes in global digital media trends, and those shifts are affecting the Estée Lauder brand's approach to media and marketing throughout the world, as well as considerations for targeting, call-to-action strategies, qualitative investments—all with an eye to retail collaboration and product sales.

 

In many ways, Esther has the perfect international background for her global role. Born and raised in Pamplona, Spain, she has lived and worked in Spain, Germany, France, and the US. She's one of the few executives to have experience within media, agency and marketer roles. Esther holds a Bachelor's degree in Advertising and Public Relations from the University of Navarra, Spain; a Masters in Marketing from the Sorbonne Graduate Business School in Paris; and a Professional Certificate in Digital Marketing from NYU. Spanish may be her mother tongue, but she is also bilingual in German, French, and English, and for the last 15 years has consistently alternated reading a book in each of her four languages during her commute.