The Changing State of Luxury
Rarely has there been a more aptly titled presentation for a blog post. This is @timstock’s beautiful and informative deck, which tackles a number of pressing luxury issues and illustrations of where we’re at.
The chic learn to click
Stumbled across this very interesting article in the Ecomonist last week. Well worth a read.
Fashion brands in a digital world
The following article, written by State of Lux co-editor Chris Mair, is currently featured in Just-Style.
It’s been a busy couple of years for fashion marketers looking to establish a strong digital presence. But as fashion brands realise how to make these platforms work for them, they are genuinely beginning to innovate in the field of digital marketing, writes Chris Mair.
In the early digital years fashion brands were notoriously slow starters when it came to developing their brands online. There were some notable exceptions, such as Diesel and Nike. But for the most part brands, especially luxury ones, were reluctant to cede control and invest in anything other than their beloved glossies.
If a couple of years is a long time in fashion, in digital it is an eternity. The past few years have witnessed some of the most dramatic changes to the digital landscape in its short lifetime.
The explosion of social networking, the ever-expanding blogosphere and a feast of powerful new platforms to consume content have all contributed to a new type of web. A web that marketers will ignore at their own peril.
In the fashion sphere, one of the early signs that tides were turning was the sudden trend amongst catwalk brands to sacrifice front-row show seats typically reserved for fashion’s editorial elite in favour of a new breed of ambitious upstart.
Brands such as D&G and Dior helped make celebrities out of influential bloggers including Tavi, Bryan Boy and Scott Schuman.
Social networking shift
Another signal that fashion businesses had begun to take digital seriously was the influx of major labels onto the social networks.
Since 2009, a presence on Facebook and Twitter has become almost obligatory, with very few fashion companies failing to take ownership of their brands within these spaces.
Initially brands struggled with the concept of social platforms. Allowing customers to voice their opinions publicly and restrictive creative capabilities were not ideals that the fashion industry aspired to. But nowadays fashion brands are appearing much more comfortable with social media.
As understanding and acceptance of social media evolves, so brands are beginning to realise how they can make these platforms work for them. And as their confidence grows so we are witnessing, for the first time, fashion brands genuinely beginning to innovate in the field of digital marketing.
The recent launch of Levi’s social shopping experience is a good example. Less than two weeks had passed since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his company’s crusade to make a web where “the default is social” before Levi’s started taking advantage of it.
The new Levi’s store seamlessly incorporates a range of Facebook’s latest social functionality, allowing it to tap into its users’ social graphs. It’s a very well executed project and is very much a sign of things to come.
New breed of digital thinking
Another forward-thinking fashion brand is Burberry which, under the watch of Christopher Bailey, has pioneered a new breed of digital thinking for luxury fashion brands.
The company made headlines recently with the launch of Art of the Trench, a visual compilation of images submitted by its fans in tribute to the classic trench coat.
And it has just laid claim to another fashion first. During the live streamed broadcast of its spring/summer 2011 fashion show, as models walked down the runway, users could click on various outfits adding them to their ‘lookbook’ and discussing the collections live via Facebook and Twitter.
Uniqlo continues to deliver outstanding digital creative, but its most recent campaign was genius even by its standards. The Lucky Switch online advertising campaign involved a clever bit of technology that turned images on any website into instant win tickets, with losing tickets remaining as banner ads.
A widget was also provided to blog owners for their sites allowing them to share the winning opportunities and promote the activity to their users. The activity generated over 3m clicks and contributed to increased sales of 120%.
What makes brands like these stand out in the digital universe? Sadly there is no magic formula to a successful digital strategy.
But a common thread amongst these and other successful digital marketers is that they put digital at the heart of their marketing strategy. To these brands digital marketing is not a nice-to-have, it’s the single most important element to the marketing mix.
Chris Mair is strategy director at Airlock, a London based digital agency with specialist experience in the fashion and luxury sector. Airlock’s clients have included Diesel, Burberry,Wrangler, Levis and Swarovski. Chris Mair is also co-editor of State of Lux, a blog focused on digital marketing within the fashion and luxury sector.
Luxury Brands: fashionably late to the ecommerce party
With the news that luxury lifestyle brand Chanel has made the decision to start selling its products directly to consumers via its website, and that Selfridges is soon to launch a transactional website, one could ask if this signifies an online migration for the elite ones, and in short, yes it does.
Pod 1′s Fadi Shuman gives us his opinion about what’s in store for ecommerce in the luxury sector this year.
Full story at Figaro Digital
Avoiding Masstige
It’s no secret that the last 18 months have posed some challenging questions to the luxury market and responses from the major brands have varied. However there are 2 brands – Hermes and Rolex – both extremely influential bench marks, who are refusing to pander to the economic forces of the markets. Both CEOs have come forward in the last few days stating their intention to avoid ‘masstige’ – selling more at the expense of brand positioning or succumbing to downwards pricing pressure.
This is the kind of statement you’d expect from from both brands, but it raises an interesting question about the way in which such brands deploy social media. Neither Hermes or Rolex have been particularly active on this front and they are wise to consider their entrances carefully to maintain their anti-masstige stance.
Fashion 2.0 | Social Media Reality Check
Ever since the dynamic and erudite young fashion blogger Tavi appeared at the runway shows in New York this past September, the fashion industry has partaken in a veritable social media orgy. Article after article rightfully declared the 13 year-old blogger and her talented fashion blogger brothers and sisters — BryanBoy, Susie Bubble and others — the new fashion stars.
During New York Fashion Week in September, The New York Times Technology section exclaimed: “Young bloggers Have Ear of Fashion Heavyweights.” Then, Women’s Wear Daily declared: “Everyone’s doing it: Brands take on Social Media,” and followed with “Bricks Versus Clicks: Front Row at D&G,” ranking the front row presence of bloggers at D&G in Milan as a “Defining Moment” of the Spring/Summer 2010 collections.
But it didn’t there. The Independent in London showcased the “New Kids on the Blog,” Metro News in Toronto said “Style bloggers bring fashion to the masses,” the Irish Independent said fashion blogs are “Writing with Style,” the Financial Times revealed that “Style bloggers take centre stage” and the International Herald Tribune chimed in, saying that we are moving “From Couture — to Conversation.”
And while nothing delights us more than to see bloggers finally getting the attention and respect they deserve, the time has come for a bit of a social media reality check…
Read the full article, written by Imran Ahmed, Editor of The Business of Fashion.
Once Wary of the Web, Luxury Brands Embrace It
THE luxury goods industry, struggling through a recession that has threatened some well-known names with extinction, is trying to use technology to its advantage.
Many in the fashion business remain wary of the Internet, partly because of continuing legal battles over online sales of counterfeit goods and concerns about diluting carefully honed brand images. Many companies also have failed to execute online storefronts successfully. But executives say that attitudes are softening as brands realize that the Web provides one of the last untapped sources of potential growth.
Federico Marchetti, the founder of Yoox, a company in Milan that runs retailing sites for luxury brands like Valentino, Emilio Pucci and Jil Sander, said many labels were skeptical not long ago.
“Now,” he said, “it is the opposite.”
The move to capitalize on the Web has become a financial imperative. Analysts at Bain & Company estimate that the sales of luxury goods will fall to 154 billion euros this year ($229 billion), from 170 billion euros in 2008. It is unlikely that online revenue — still only a tiny fraction of the total — will make up the difference soon.
One of the most successful ventures on the Web has been Net-à-Porter, a site based in London that sells high-end fashion and accessories, delivering them to homes or offices in black boxes. Though sales in the United States slowed during the depth of the recession, they have since recovered and have continued to rise at double-digit rates in other markets, the company said. It expects sales this year to top £100 million ($168 million), up from £82 million last year.
“It just made a lot of sense to allow women to shop when they wanted to shop, how they wanted to shop — at work, at home, in bedroom,” said Natalie Massenet, the company’s founder.
At a time when trundling along high-end strips like Bond Street in London or Avenue Montaigne in Paris with an armful of shopping bags seems out of touch with reality, Net-à-Porter may have benefited from the greater discretion that its service offers. Last year, to cloak purchases even more, the company added a brown-bag delivery option. This year, in another bit of good timing that Ms. Massenet attributed to luck rather than foresight, the company added a new site selling fashions from previous seasons at reduced prices.
Customer overlap between the sites is only 6 percent, Ms. Massenet said, with fashionistas frequenting the original Net-à-Porter and bargain hunters turning to the new site, outnet.com.
That ought to comfort luxury executives worried that selling online might undermine the high-end appeal of their wares — and the high prices that come with such exclusivity.
Some individual brands that previously refrained from selling online have recently embraced the Internet. Hugo Boss, the German clothier, started introducing Internet shops in Europe last year. Now it is accelerating its online efforts, planning to open similar stores in the United States early next year and in Asia the year after, said Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, the chief executive.
Mr. Lahrs said Hugo Boss expected to sell more than 50 million euros of goods online within two years, up from a little more than 10 million euros this year.
While some labels are now trying to make up for lost time, others remain cautious about the pitfalls of the Internet.
Led by the largest company in the business, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, luxury brand owners have fought a series of legal battles across several continents with Internet companies like Google and eBay, contending that they aided in the online sale of counterfeit goods. Courts have issued mixed rulings, sometimes siding with the brand owners and fining the technology companies, and in other cases agreeing that sufficient steps were being taken to root out fakes.
Some executives also remain reluctant to invest heavily in digital initiatives because of costly failures in the past. Uché Okonkwo, a Paris-based consultant, said that brand owners are “many steps behind the clients, when they should be several steps ahead of them.”
One brand that has won plaudits from analysts for its efforts is Burberry. This month, it created a social networking site that allows owners of Burberry’s trench coats to exchange stories about them.
Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s chief creative officer, said high-end brands should go further in trying to give Web stores the rich texture of physical stores.
“Whether they are walking into our store on Bond Street or tapping in from India or China, it’s about making sure the consumer is getting the same experience,” he said.
From New York Times
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