Managing the Exclusive Distribution of Content as a Luxury Brand
As marketers, we love creating campaigns that take on a life of their own, that become distributed and deposited by our top brand advocates throughout their seemingly infinite social networks. Whether it’s online or not, word of mouth is something all marketers seek, it’s our holy grail. Having a loyal customer take hold of a brand piece and share it with their circle via word of mouth is pure. solid. gold.
But what does this mean online?
When we think “viral” we think Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, Mentos exploding in Diet Coke or cute little girls impersonating Beyonce. We think mass market Consumer Packaged Goods and we think YouTube. We certainly do NOT think luxury. So how do luxury brands stay true to their status while allowing viral marketing to help boost sales?
The reality is that viral marketing for high end brands already exists, and it’s lucrative. It’s just not being utilized by the brands themselves. Rather, it’s bloggers who tout images of celebrities wearing the latest designer labels, or fashion fanatics that passionately write about the pieces and brands they love on their blogs, Facebook profiles and Twitter handles. Brand photography, logos and b-roll footage gets ripped from the brand’s website and deposited throughout the world-wide web. What’s scary for the brands is that control is automatically relinquished to the individual and the identity of the brand is not always upheld.
This isn’t to say that luxury marketers have lost all control of brand image online, instead it becomes increasingly important for the brands to establish controlled online representations and partnerships that embody the brand in a way that also takes advantage of the online platform.
This can be done on so many levels and in so many different ways. For example:
* Blogger Outreach: Identify the key influencers in your industry (or in complimentary industries if you are taking a lifestyle approach to the campaign). Reach out to them with ideas, be transparent and invite a dialogue to see how the partnership can be mutually beneficial (blogger recieves great, exclusive content to post, brand receives great word of mouth). Christian Dior recently conducted a successful blogger outreach campaign to build buzz for a ten day auction for charity. They were successful in garnering over 160,000 site visits in only ten days and raising over $40,000 for charity.
* Multimedia Content: Enrich your content offering using multimedia. Behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive video interviews, artist partnerships for video shorts. For example, on MaxMara‘s website they have posted a backstage video of their Fall 2010 collection pieces being shot at The Museum of Natural History.
* Levarage your social media presence (or that of the key influencers) to be a hub of this engaging content and point back to the main brand website for a cohesive and synergistic online presence.
* Incorporate interactive and advanced functionalities on your site/microsite/social media profile. Many new softwares allow brands to have full control while offering an innovative, useful application to users. Revlon has done this on site by incorporating innovative software that allows users to upload an image of themselves and “try on” different cosmetic products in a very realistic virtual makeover tool.
This article was featured in the Business of Fashion Daily Digest Business of Fashion
Photo Credits: Emerging Media Blog
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Great prespective and I agree with you 100% that “Brands now need to embrace the power of online sharing, and choose ways to facilitate it, so that the brand approved content is available to those who want to discuss it”.
I am a blogger myself and I have been blogging about brands, designers and their collections passionately. I believe that bloggers have the power to influence the consumer since we are able to speak their lingo and are able to offer a perspective from the consumer’s point of view. Consumers who follow blogs know that the opinions expressed are real and not just marketing talk. Its truly time for the big name brands to recognize the power bloggers have and work with them to their advantage. I believe it would be a truly lucrative partnership!
Please share your blogs with Fashion’s Collective!
I recently discovered your blog and it seems that your content is very relevant to what my company has begun to blog about. Infact, I have your post about Twitter and Luxury brands saved to cite when we cover “Luxury Magazines: In or Out?” next week. I wanted to share the following post with you: http://bit.ly/bblZZD. We believe that luxury brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton are leveraging their social media presence, but we question whether or not their tactics are true to their brand. There is definitely a fine line between generating content for social media purposes and generating contant relevant and in line with that brand’s purpose via social media. Hope you’ll take a look at our blog and let us know what you think!
We’ll certainly check out the link! Digital is such a hot topic in luxury right now and it’s really such an exciting time. Thanks for reading!
I really enjoyed your article. Thank you for taking the time to post it.
Thanks so much for reading!