With the NET-A-PORTER and Yoox merger, all luxury brands need to quickly embrace new e-commerce strategies and to develop unique social media experience. This takeaway report aims to explore what is at stake for the luxury industry, to highlight few best practice both from a content strategy perspective and from a retail marketing one. From anti-social behaviours to re-generate exclusivity, to new approaches regarding customers journeys, the opportunity is big for luxury brands. Featured brands: Hermès, Chanel, Louis Vuitton etc. More information on http://thisisreup.com

1. LUXURY & SOCIAL
MEDIA 2015
A TAKEAWAY REPORT

2. AGENDA.
Incipit p3
Retail stores are still the luxury’s Disney world. p14
Trend 1: Closing down the curtains p23
Trend 2: Luxury is my story, better p31
Trend 3: Many Streams p42
Trend 4: Pleasured p50
Now what? p57

3. INCIPIT.
Luxury brands still struggle to find the right balance between digital communications and
scarcity management.
In an era of digital ever-everything (connections, accesses, information), the challenge is to
embrace this change to root luxury brands on unique paths to exclusivity, bespoke services and
in a way, education.
If Paris has its rue Montaigne, Firenze its fashion week, Geneva its Haute Horlogerie and Anvers
its jewels, Facebook – and main social networks in general – seem to share a same look & feel
both for FMCGs brands and for high end Maisons.
3

4. Digital pipelines are not naturally made for luxury; there is a need to add new social layers
beyond what’s already present. As a Dior retail store has a unique look & feel, luxury brands
need to translate – or even digitally imagine first – how customers can experience the same
sort of pleasure and exclusiveness online.
4

5. LUXURY BRANDS ARE SOCIAL TOPICS.
Millions of conversations occur every month
around luxury brands
 Some brands like Chanel are somehow part of
pop culture and are naturally discussed in
social channels
 Niche brands which are only accessible to very
few people are more difficult to talk about
5

6. WORD-OF-MOUTH: KEY DRIVER.
In a very demanding market, where knowledge is key to get to know why a product is “better” than another one,
there’s a need for customers to be educated, taken by the hand.
Word-of-mouth has never been as important
6

7. “In higher price-point categories,
word of mouth’s impact is almost 20% of sales.”
Word of Mouth Marketing Association (November 2014)
7

8. 2016: THE NEW TIPPING POINT.
Pricing matters. NET-A-PORTER x YOOX merger
accelerates the entry of big luxury players in the e-
commerce world while forcing others to adjust.
8

9. “Luxury brands will no longer be able to retail items in China that cost 20%
more than in Paris for example.
Centralising the pricing strategies will force luxury brands into a price
harmonisation that some have already started, such as Chanel.”
Sam William-Thomas
9

10. THE E-COMMERCE GAME IS ON.
After years of avoiding entering the e-commerce playground, Chanel officially released a timeline. It should
open the pipeline within the group of luxury brands which were trying not to enter this environment.
10

11. DIGITAL BROKE THE PATH TO PURCHASE.
Thousands of new touchpoints to bring customers to specific luxury stores
 Explosion of new paths that are not yet fully mastered by luxury brands
 Same touchpoints as other FMCG brands, very tough to be different
11
© McKinsey

12. "We are testing the approach”
Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Fashion, Chanel
12

13. JOURNEYS ARE NOW ASYMMETRIC.
13
Discover Consider Explore Purchase Recommend
Inherit Understand Purchase Recommend Discover
Purchase Explore Discover Consider Recommend

14. RETAIL STORES ARE STILL THE LUXURY’S
DISNEY WORLD.
14

15. EXPLOSION OF LUXURY E-OFFERS.
Luxury products are one-click away from any customer worldwide
 Pricing is therefore tougher than ever to be justified
 New luxury levers explored by pure players: experience, niche local raw materials etc.
15

16. LUXURY: BLURRED LINES.
16
Value-for-money is now more and
more important, even for luxury
brands, as worldwide customers tend
to improve their luxury-savviness
© Erwan Rambourg

17. “Today e-commerce represents a scant 4 percent of luxury sales—but e-
commerce is only one aspect of the digital opportunity. Our research found
that an additional 40 percent of luxury purchases are in some way
influenced by consumers’ digital experience—for example, through online
research of an item that is subsequently bought offline, or social-media
“buzz” that leads to an in-store purchase.”
Mckinsey, luxury shopping in the digital age
17

18. DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS SOON UNIFIED.
A need for luxury brands to consider customer-relationship in a unique way, whatever the medium or channel is.
 A breakthrough: if retail is still the home of luxury brands, its entry door is digital first: 50% of total luxury
purchases is influenced by online (BCG)
 64% of young adults research products while out shopping (Samsung)
18
Samsung future shoppers 2014

19. “Walking through the doors is just like
walking into our web site”
Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry
19

20. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN PROGRESS.
20
the Digital IQ Index®: Watches & Jewelry http://www.l2inc.com/research/watches-jewelry-2014

21. “Kering is working on a new large-scale project, aimed in particular at
establishing a single client base common to the various distribution
channels.”
Kering 2014 Financial document
21

22. RETAIL IS A NOW A DIGITAL CHAMELEON.
22
Discover
Collect
Learn
Try
Enjoy Purchase
New range of products
New look, touch & feel
Orders made online
Additional products
Orders made online
Additional products
Buy products in-store
Additional products
New range of products
New look, touch & feel
New range of products
New look, touch & feel

23. TREND 1: CLOSING DOWN THE CURTAINS
23

24. RE-GENERATING EXCLUSIVITY.
When it’s too easy to get into a luxury brand, its brand equity generally tends to collapse.
 Retail now plays a tremendous role in the social journey: the place where the most important magic can
happen
 Retail, like concert halls, is one of the most shareable social objects: visual sharing culture broke the first
notion of digital influence. If an individual is at the right place at the right moment, he can grab more
attention than a top fashion blogger or online journalist
24

25. A NEED FOR A DISTINCTIVE TONE.
 Luxury brands cannot rely only on inheritance and vertical transmission. They must build up reasons for an
individual to build up its own uniqueness. The representation of the individual himself has become luxury
 A need to tell a story about the brand itself…but also about the people who inhabit this brand
25

26. CURTAINS HAVE VERY VERSATILE MEANINGS.
26
A very versatile customer, keen to explore far more
experiences than before
 A saturation of special editions and collaborations
between luxury and affordable brands which
complexify the landscape
 A war on attention in which generating enough
digital footprints is far from easy
440 million luxury consumers by 2020 according to
BCG
 In the era of über personalization, a tremendous
blackjack for old Maisons
© Eurostaf

27. WHEN BRANDS CLOSE THE CURTAINS.
Miu Miu decided to create a new craze for its Very
Important Customers by providing an amazing experience.
 The happy few shared their experience online, as any
customer would do
 The difference is that, as they’re high profile, all the
other tiers heard about it and want to be part of the club
27

28. WHEN BRANDS TEMPORARILY OPEN THE GATE.
In 2013, Alexander Wang decided to invite New
Yorkers, who are not necessarily highest profiles
to attend an undisclosed event. It turns out that
people started to fight to grab the products.
 High profile could make fun of this crowd
 Despite a very arrogant and violent tactics, it
generated an enormous word-of-mouth:
cheap human nature was more accused than
the ethics of the luxury house…
28

29. DEEP WEB PRINCIPLE APPLIED TO LUXURY.
What is rare is expensive
 Academics portals, hitmen, high value content are often protected
 Luxury brands are also extremely keen to disappear fromgeneral public
channels
 A trend which matches with the growing usage of hybrid apps, as the
networks become the reasons to connect
 What’s secret is shared: the rise of messengers’ app as principal social media
 580 million registered users on LINE, 700 million active users on
Whatsapp…
 Growing usage of share-to-buttons dedicated to Whatsapp or WeChat
29

30. MONTBLANC X MOONPHASE X WECHAT.
30

31. TREND 2: LUXURY IS MY STORY, BETTER
31

32. INDIVIDUAL EMPOWEREMENT IS KEY.
Luxury brands cannot rely only on inheritance and vertical
transmission. They must build up reasons for an individual to
build up its own uniqueness. The representation of the individual
himself has become luxury.
32

33. “Unlike in the 1920s, [luxury] aim is not ‘to efface the boundary between
art and everyday life’, but to build up new distinctions in ‘the rapid flow of
signs and images which saturate the fabric of everyday life in
contemporary society’”
Featherstone, Mike (2007) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism London, Sage Publications.
33

34. LUXURY-ME IS BOOSTED BY VISUAL CULTURE.
Instagram is all about daily lives and…perception of these daily lives.
 Luxury products can actually enchant this daily visual snack
 An acceleration of product as a story-driver
34

35. BREAKING THE CONSERVATIVE RULES.
A need to go beyond marketing pitches and PR kit
 Trying to matter in the hectic schedule of affluent
consumers
 A need to define a unique content strategy, which
goes beyond the simple description of a product but
which endeavours the experience of the product
 A need to be timely: luxury brands no longer hesitate
to partner with strong digital influencers to bring
their communities to the brand
35

36. HERMÈS PUNCHLINES.
36

37. A BIT OF GRAPHIC FANTASY WITH TIFFANY & CO.
37

38. …WHILE OTHERS ONLY FACTUALLY RELATE NEWS.
38

39. REPETITION IS THE NEW EDUCATION.
39

40. A NEED TO FIT TO THE SOCIAL SPACE.
40

41. HARRODS CREATED ITS OWN CANDY-CRUSH.
41

42. TREND 3: MANY STREAMS
42

43. LUXURY BRANDS DIVE INTO NEW MAINSTREAM.
Hip hop is no longer perceived as this street paria but is
at the very core of pop culture, all over the world.
 Maison Martin Margiela is now diving into this
trend, providing special collection for one of the
modern heroes of hip-hop: Kanye West
 Spreading the word about the brand myth through
another myth does not dillute the brand but make it
shine in the eyes of a crowd, while reserving its
products to only happy few
43

44. NEW INFLUENCERS ARE DIVERSIFYING.
44

45. WHAT’S LUXURY FOR YOU IS NOT FOR ME.
New sequencing of luxury stories: no longer an only one consumer, but several cultural personae
 Sneakers example is now a masterpiece to demonstrate how far luxury territory’s changing its DNA
 Luxury is no longer just related to a certain bourgeoisie or aristocratic field: new sorts of social capital are
more important than family: followers, capability to make a statement resonate in the popular culture etc.
45

46. “We've been sold a concept of joy through advertising, through car
advertising, through fashion branding. It's not the concept of time, time
with your family, time with your friends, the little time that we do have on
earth and what we do with that. It was somehow sold to us through a Gucci
bag or something. Time is the only luxury.“
Kanye West
46

47. NEW STREAMS OF LUXURY.
47
Technology
Pop culture
Transmission
Digital conversation driver
New narratives for new kinds
of influencers and buyers
Inheritance is no longer a
question of centuries but
potentially of decades
The possibility to grow the
reputation of a brand only
through online channels
Owning a product is now
owning the story you’ll tell in
the next future

48. THE LUXURY BEATS GO ON.
48

49. NEW APPROACHES TO TIME OR HISTORY.
49

50. TREND 4: PLEASURED
50

51. AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE.
Digital should explore senses and make them feel good.
 Explosion of “feel good” content, which unlocks the same sort of pleasure as a massage
 New ways for luxury brands to translate their deep self into content that has a direct impact on body and mind
51

52. CHOPARD AND ITS HAPPY DIAMOND CONCEPT.
52

53. VIRTUAL: A TANGIBLE SOCIAL MEANING.
High involvement products will very soon explore
new digital / virtual expressions:
 Hidden gems in HTML code
 Bespoke emoticons only made for you
53

54. ANTICIPATING VIRTUAL REALITY IMPACT.
Not “virtual realities” but true physical alternative experience
 Luxury brands will have to provide even more comprehensive
experience to minds plugged to new ways of perceiving the
world
 A need to connect the dots between a tangible craft and
what this craft can create in terms of mindframe
54

55. “Time is the ultimate luxury”
Antoine Arnault, Head of Communications at Louis Vuitton
55

56. NEW RATIOS TO BE SET UP.
Wider diversities of journeys to save customers’ time…or to make him enjoy deeper moments with the brand
 A need to imagine new ‘conciergeries’ depending on targeted public
 A need to rethink the touch points between human relationships and transactional, eventually automatized
platforms
56

57. NOW WHAT?
57

58. GET IN TOUCH ;)
@lilzeon
laurent@thisisreup.com
58