The luxury conundrum

by Julia Errens 18 Sep 2013 The season may have changed and London Fashion Week may have ended, but the challenge highlighted by Julia at the beginning of the summer is no less of an issue: How do luxury brands deal with the paradox of staying exclusive whilst attempting to appeal to a broad digital audience? Digital marketing and retail, resting on the mighty shoulders of perceived democracy of information, are a very sensitive field for luxury brands to navigate. Wealth and luxury are highly traditional concepts, and whilst one is needed to attain the other, a sense of luxury is shaped by a complex interplay of expectations and conventions beyond financial means. Exclusivity is inherent to a luxurious brand perception, and incompatible with that democracy. Marketers must find a balance between providing digital access and diluting the brand essence through ubiquity. According to BPG Group's strategic planner Rohit Arora's essay on the 8 Ps of Luxury Brand Marketing, the consumption of luxury goods is most commonly tied to three aims: self assertion, differentiation and/or a genuine appreciation of the quality of the product. The first aim appeals to aspirational customers and can be communicated through common social media channels. Maintaining a fan-base of people who want to but can't afford a product is equal parts investing in potential future customers and feeding the brand legend by keeping demand alive. It follows naturally that on Facebook, a network with no thresholds, luxury brands on average clocked vastly higher numbers of fans than regular consumer goods brands, according to an infographic released by MDG Advertising. As Facebook likes are registered on personal profiles, the act of appreciating a brand becomes a part of curating personal image, and to that image the BMW a young man wants to buy one day is a more valid contribution than the ramen soup he does buy twice a week. However, unsurprisingly, the graphs also show that user interaction is at a bare minimum on most luxury Facebook sites. Differentiation, in turn, likely speaks most loudly to the desires of the affluent, established customer base; those with enough disposable income to buy the little black dress at its mythological source, the Chanel brand, rather than that season's H&M interpretation of the concept. Of course this also ties into self-assertion, as possession of luxury goods sends a multitude of messages about taste level, socio-economic establishment and the education that relates to both, and informs a sense for the appreciation of craftsmanship and quality. Differentiation through consumption choices happens when the Facebook profile becomes reality. To secure the sense of quality and distinction that makes for a large cut of the price tag on luxury products, brands take great care to curate and communicate their company history; the legacy of craftsmanship and often generations' worth of customer endorsement. Take the mythology Jack Daniels builds around its founder and community, for instance. Being forward-thinking is hard in an industry that relies so heavily on its legacy and steadfastness. Success in a digital marketing space is currently mostly recognised in environments of

'spreadabilty', as defined in Jenkins, Ford and Green's Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture: "the potential both technical and cultural for audiences to share content for their own purposes", that is to provide branded content and then facilitate its distribution and appropriation through the customer base. Such ubiquitous representation, however, proves detrimental to luxury properties. Spread is of little value in a culture that deals in being special, catering to the selected few. Gucci took years to crawl out of the hole it dug by overlicensing its brand in the late seventies and eighties, and Burberry suffered from the same problem at the start of the millennium. A decade on, Burberry has managed to reposition itself as a modern fashion brand that is fuelled by its tradition, without seeming lugged down by its stodgy weight. This is due in large part to its identifying precisely which digital experiences to utilise to further its image. Their The Art of the Trench campaign launched as a photo sharing community in 2009. The premise was to display photos of the many ways in which its iconic trenchcoats can be worn. Featuring shots by recognised fashion photographers and bloggers as well as carefully selected contributions from customers, the community simultaneously reflected high fashion viability, ongoing trends in street fashion and blogging, and the coats' omnipresence in vintage clothing; which in turn subtly underlines the brand's staying power, long tradition, durability of its products, and relative attainability. The Art of the Trench was a very skilful approach to social media within luxury marketing, but the recent flagship store on Regent Street in London is where Burberry shows its savvy in how to use digital features to its advantage. In a reversal of conventions, the retail space was designed to be a physical representation of the website, with the biggest retail screen in Europe, over 500 speakers, and RFID-chip tagged products that will turn mirrors into screens displaying catwalk footage and vice-versa. The absence of fixed pay points in favour of floor assistants with iPads and mobile payment devices further help create a holistic shopping experience without any disruption of the consumption flow. Contrast this Burberry turnaround with the fate of fellow UK heritage brand Aquascutum, which was sold last year by administrators to Hong Kong-based YGM. Rather than through mass-oriented social media marketing, luxury brands can excel in the digital market by providing easier access to knowledgeable assistance and reliable collaboration with its affluent customers to help them manage their lifestyle and save time, the only luxury remaining once money isn't an issue. This includes digital retail platforms with a minimum of pain points SEO is still often so imprecise that a first-stop search of high-end brands is often more likely redirect to resellers; plus, flash-and-splash heavy sites will do little but induce a lot of bounces when visited from mobile devices. Beyond the above, customer experience is also shaped by information that will further lifestyle aspirations such as Mr Porter's weekly style guide and journal, or build trust in a brand's lifestyle promises such as Gucci's Little Black Book app, which provides dining, shopping and other highend recommendations according to GPS tracking data in your phone. Native apps do very well in the luxury sector, as they don't rely on the spreadabiltiy of mobile web content, but rather the

concept of stickiness providing a service for well-informed customers that will motivate them to stick around for longer stretches of time. An excellent example of this is Tiffany & Co's Engagement Ring Finder app, which provides not only a catalogue of its jewellery, but also quick and simple ring measurement, social sharing plug-ins to tell everybody the good news, and a camera-enabled "try on" feature a seamless in-app shopping experience. These experiences have come to replace slick television advertising and premium catalogues as means of contact with the brand, and they must be approached with the same pride in modern digital craftsmanship as was previously afforded to the physically tangible trappings of brand collateral; the silky wrapping paper, the handsome leather box; the new car smell. Hanging on to legacy concepts by forcing successful offline marketing into digital spaces has previously hindered luxury brand's digital progress. But by using recent advances in digital retail and customer support, they can tap back into their values of lending excellent, individual service, and secure their positioning by continuing to make customers feel special.