Christian Louboutin, Dancer In A Daydream

Luxury brands are growing confidence in their take up of social media marketing. Increasingly, rather than perceiving social networks as relinquishing control of their carefully branded environments, luxury brands are rapidly getting to grips with the idea of consumers as a key distribution channel in themselves. Luxury brands such as Dior are now investing their marketing efforts into the creation of fun and beautiful digital content that extends the story and messaging of their brand.

Check out a shortlist compiled by The Business of Fashion, showcasing a range of such fashion films from Chanel’s cinematic take on the sophisticated dancefloors of St Tropez, through to Christian Louboutin’s playful and quirky illustration of a creative daydream.

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Consumers as your distribution channel

Social networks are set up as a perfect channel for luxury marketers to harness the power of word of mouth marketing. In a time where consumer scepticism is at an all time high, survey by PR firm, Edelman (2006) found that 67% of consumer goods sold as a result of word of mouth, by a three to one margin people are far more likely to trust “average people like me”.

As the authors over at Fashion’s Collective blog write “having a loyal customer take hold of a brand piece and share it with their circle via word of mouth is pure. solid. gold.”   See full article here

Fashion marketers are now taking this one step further and engaging with consumers by providing or in some cases even co-creating content with their audience.  This is the future currency that will build consumer advocacy for their fashion brand and products. “People on social networks love to share. Find the people who are passionate about your industry, your brand and your products, reward them with valuable information and content, and then watch as they put all of their passion, zeal and social media acumen to work promoting your brand to the rest of their social network.” (Ryan & Jones, 2009).

What does this mean for 2010 and beyond?

In a study by Outsell Inc (cited at LuxurySociety.com) digital spending is expected to eclipse print ad spending this year for the first time ever. With a further study by the Society of Digital Agencies showing a continued upward surge in digital media investment for 2010. 81% of brand executives surveyed expected to increase their digital projects in 2010, and 50% will be moving cash from traditional to digital budgets.  See more

A marketer’s ability to identify and reward influential and loyal consumer brand ambassadors will most certainly reshape the traditional value chain as they themselves become an essential and highly effective distribution channel. The key challenge now for luxury brands is in creating such a network of well-aligned marketing partners – from social media fan communities who are powered by aspiration and desire for conversation around the brand, through to influential bloggers, and even traditional media partners such as Vogue, who, with the recent announcement of the launch of their iPad app, appear to be quickly adapting their publishing strategy to the needs of the luxury advertising sector and its increasing consumer demand for inspiring, lustworthy digital content.

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.

Christopher Bailey is at it again, claiming another ‘digital first’ for luxury.  This time they’re launching a motion-responsive video campaign which allows users to rotate, pause and drag images 180 degrees.  The idea being to bring the reality of  show experience closer to the end user.  See & hear Christopher breaking it down here.

Sadly State of Lux did not feature in Leon Bailey-Green’s Online Fashion 100. How rejected we feel.

Nevertheless it still makes for some interesting reading. Enjoy.

Great piece here by Fashionista.com on the most highly prized editorial influencers in the fashion blogging community.  All the usual suspects are here with accompanying lowdown.  Great resource if you’re getting to grips with who’s who.

PSFK published an article today which covers their research in to the Top 10 luxury sites compatibility with iPad.  Not a great result – only Gucci passed.  Why?  Well obviously due to their dependence on Flash, a technology that Steve Jobs has outlawed in both the iPad and iPhone.  While this decision is controversial it can’t be ignored by the luxury sector.  The iPad is just about to launch in major luxury markets markets like Japan, where iPhone penetration is 46%.  The lag time in not embracing the technology could cost dearly.  Let’s hope this isn’t a reflection of past trends the luxury industry has been slow to embrace.

Following on from our last piece, there are some interesting developments around video hotspotting that could have major implications for fashion and luxury industries.  Essentially they ustilise the engagement of video and link it to ecom.  Pokeware is one of the players which is gunning specifically for fashion.  As this demo on Dazed illustrates, there is still some way to go (static links as opposed to dynamic real-time).  It’s a space that is going to hot up dramatically in the coming months.  BoF have done a nice piece on it here.

This week see’s the launch of Styleite, a new website dedicated to providing its readers with the latest and greatest in fashion and beauty news, insight, and commentary. Styleite also hosts what they claim to be the web’s most innovative and interactive photo community, Style Sheets.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the site is what they call the “Power Grid”, a statistical analytics tool that sources the web in realtime to reveal which fashion industry icons are being spoken about the most. The tool objectively ranks people based on a number of different metrics,  including anything and everything from blog mentions to circulation, Twitter followers to Google buzz depending on the category.

Styleite is certainly causing a bit of a stir amongst industry pundits and is definitely one we’ll be keeping an eye on.