What is “exclusivity” if it’s accessible to everyone? That’s a central premise discussed in this research paper on luxury digital marketing. The challenge of luxury digital marketing is maintaining a sense of exclusivity and rarity given that the Internet is founded on principles of democracy and accessibility.
The authors point out that great luxury marketing use various digital mediums to spread a brand’s dream while delivering selective and exclusive content and services. But to a blue-blood luxury marketer like Karl Lagerfeld, the Internet fails to convey “the unique feel and sophistication of luxury materials, refined tailoring and extraordinary attention to detail found in luxury fashion.”
The authors take slight issue with this argument pointing out that the Internet, obviously, flips traditional one-way marketing approaches and gives savvy luxury brand managers the opportunities to create truly multidimensional and personalized experiences. The authors point out four dimensional factors luxury brand managers should reinforce in their communications and strategies:
- Financial value: Keep the price-value relationship high.
- Functional value: Deliver a sensory experience leveraging music, space, and community.
- Individual value: Reinforce online the status queues that occur offline.
- Social value: Leverage social networks to reinforce community and brand advocacy.
The authors point to the following luxury brands as leaders in online luxury branding. Gucci does a great job with leveraging social networks, making it easy to engage with the brand via social networks. Louis Vuitton and Burberry do a great job with embedded video narratives on their sites. And Viktor & Rolf imparts a sense of avant garde while co-opting broad narrative and memes.
Four top digital luxury marketing brands:
Louis Vuitton, LV Stories, LV Art of Packing
Gucci, Gucci App, Gucci YouTube, Gucci Instagram, Gucci G+
Burberry, Burberry Acoustic Music
Viktor & Rolf, V&R Intro Video “The World Round Web”, V&R Heritage
Photo credit: Viktor Pivovarov
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