…the brand’s lifestyle.
A few years ago, there was a fascinating interview regarding consumers’ decreasing attention spans on BBC with Ted Selker, an expert in the online equivalent of body language at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Ted’s argument was that with literally millions of websites at our fingertips, the attention span of the average web surfer is measured in seconds. In fact, the addictive nature of web browsing has reduced our attention spans to nine seconds, and most online viewers spend less than 60 seconds at an average site. At this point in time, these statistics for the average American adult look tame when compared to the statistics on Generation Y. According to a TubeMogul study, the average video watcher spends less than a minute watching any given clip and filters out 95% of the information they receive.
In the last three years, Luxury brands have been investing heavily in their digital presence, particularly their websites. According to Barclays Wealth statistics on High Net Worth Individuals, 76% consider themselves technologically intelligent. For luxury brands, an online presence needs to be as polished as any presentation created in store. However, with today’s increasingly crowded market place, how does a brand generate the right impression so that visitors linger and engage in discovery?
Due to ever changing consumer behaviors, we at Fashion’s Collective have seen the industry tide slowly turn away from websites, merely creating impressions online that lead to a world of engagement.
Engagement occurs when brands add particular value into their presence that captures the interest and attention of the audience. The current direction for luxury is to project their brand in the ‘luxury lifestyle’ route. This occurs when the brand borrows from experiences that connect with it and use it as a means to add more facets that indirectly market a product.
We have seen great examples by Lexus, Chandon and Ralph Lauren, where culture is being utilized as a vessel for consumers to experience the brand.
Why is engagement so important? To begin, today’s consumer has so much choice, a short attention span, and, due to the recession, a more sober spending plan. In the luxury space, value for consumers is constituted when a brand offers an emotional gain. It is when the brand enhances a consumer’s presence amongst their peers. In the early 2000’s, we saw the obsession with logo-mania: consumers boasted amongst themselves with gaudy emblems. Today, for the luxury consumer, authority comes in the form of being the most ‘in-the-know’. It’s about being cultured and knowing about the latest luxury experiences, it’s about giving consumers the opportunity to later wax-lyrical to their peers. Today, brands have a real opportunity to communicate these aspects directly to their audiences via digital. And certainly, integrating engagement into their branded sites will make sure their audiences stay longer than 60 seconds.
Photo Credits: The Sartorialist
Written by: Agata Seidel
All articles are copy-edited by Gina Conforti
