We already talk about the Art of Trench and the 2010 Spring/Summer line live show at London’s Fashion week (view article) to show the British advance in terms of digital.

This time, Burberry really established itself as a truly digital luxury brand. What does it means and why do I say that?

Burberry is facing a huge challenge, trying to remain understood by its regular customers and reaching at the same time a new, modern target. They want to give an impulsion, to modernize the brand while protecting their authentic and timeless heritage, which can be quite complicated and tricky.

The new direction in terms of marketing and communication that Burberry wants to give to its brand has been clearly defined. It results a proper strategy, some goals, and its practical application, which become clearly logical. The brand has properly understood the stakes of the digital, the fact that it was not just a trend but a tool to serve their strategy.

They are not developing some digital useless game, application or website. There is a purpose in all their use of digital. Their digital campaigns are attracting the Gen Y with new ways of seeing the products, playing with the ads or even watching the show live while being focused on the products and on the dream that is luxury.

Let’s developed it with their new campaigns and events that have been launched next week.

Last Saturday, at 3pm Milan time, the Burberry Prorsum Spring Summer 2011 menswear show was broadcasted live on live.burberry.com. This was not a huge event as for the S/S live show. It was just the assertion of the Burberry’s will to mix fashion and digital. They show at the same time that you can both do business (the outerwear and accessories from the runway were available to order immediately after the show exclusively and only for a week) and make people dream…

This event was also the launch of Burberry acoustic, a new initiative, which celebrates the Burberry heritage of founding, developing and supporting emerging British talent. Fashion has always had some closed links with music. The purpose of Burberry Acoustic is to collaborate with British artists across multiple Burberry experiences through the attitude and energy of music (Read more about Burberry Acoustic). It is also to connect with the Gen Y and to reconnect with the proper British heritage and culture of Burberry.

The collaboration with British artists can be seen through some videos exclusively shot in the UK for Burberry. But it is a complete and complex collaboration.

Thus, some British musicians as Sebastian Brice and Caspar Smyth have walked the runway in Milan, other British musicians were guests at the show and others like Gwilym Gold, Rory Cottam or Samuel Fry are part of the new advertising campaign cast.

This is the way Christopher Bailey, Burberry Chief Creative Officer, saw this new collaboration:

“We have collaborated on so many projects with new and young emerging British bands over the years.  We felt that with the great interaction that we have experienced with our social media website artofthetrench that we could collaborate with musicians and artists to put together an incredible group of ongoing acoustic sessions from some of the finest talent coming out of the UK and bring them to the broad global Burberry audience”

Burberry wants to renew with what is luxury: something magical. They want their customers not only to buy products but also to be part of a whole Burberry’s experience, which mix fashion, music, technology, and emotions.

The last event that happened on Thursday was the launch of the digitally interactive global advertising campaign. Once again, it is not a separated event but a meaningful one. The idea is to bring people closer to the collection, cast and location. Motion responsive images and video can be clicked, rotated, paused and dragged 180 degrees and individual products and cast respond to user-controlled command. You can also share the A/W 2010 interactive advertising campaign on Twitter or Facebook and you’re enjoying the sound of some British artists while looking at the new products…Once again, it is not a Burberry’s will to do digital because they have to, but to make people experience their brands using digital.

“This campaign protects our authentic and timeless heritage and evolves the modern way in which we communicate that. The Burberry campaigns have always been characterized by the dynamic British cast and I wanted to express the individuality and the energy behind each of their different creative expressions. Burberry was founded on innovation and outerwear and I want anyone who sees the campaign not just to see images, but to feel a part of what we have created; connecting people through technology, music, the collections, the attitude, and the emotion captured.”

Christopher Bailey, Burberry Chief Creative Officer

All those initiatives from Burberry properly respond to their new brand creed: “Protect, Explore, Inspire”.

With all these new events and campaigns, they show that digital was their new belief, but a meaningful one, with a strong brand strategy behind.

They prove to the luxury industry that you can make people dream using digital and keeping your business goals.

A bonus, because this song is great…

But i really wanted to share this breaking news with you, as it is an important (again) digital time for the Luxury industry.

Burberry Prorsum Spring Summer 2011 menswear show will be live streamed from Milan on Saturday 19 June at 3PM (GMT+2) Live Burberry.

As for their last live show at London’s Fashion week, they will sell key pieces from their SS 11 collection to order immediately after the show exclusively and will only be available to order until 26 June.

Burberry live stream can be viewed globally and on iphone and ipad devices.

Live comments and image sharing enabled through Twitter and Facebook on live.burberry.com

Exclusive: Burberry Prorsum Spring Summer 2011 Pre Collection Menswear images.

While waiting for the event, you can watch the last Burberry Prorsum S/S Mens 2010 Fashion Show.

Social media is a deep evolution translating the changes happening in our societies. It is a social phenomenon and at the same time, it is just a communication tool. So how luxury brands should try to deal with it?

The first comment to make here is that after being very fearful about social media trends, because of control issues mainly, luxury brands are finally getting in the wave. And as you might have seen it through some of our articles, some brands have been very creative among the thousands of available possibilities. Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Chanel or Jimmy Choo have been some of the most innovative brands and have done so without compromising their brand image. Additionally, the campaigns they’ve recently led have proven that luxury brands could be at the same time innovative and successful regarding social media.

But not all brands have understood this and we are still seeing some attempts at getting into the “social media vibe” but with actions that seem completely out of any global strategy.

The last two “failed” attempts I recently saw were the new Rolls Royce iPhone App and the new Tissot Augmented Reality App.

Rolls Royce recently announced that it was launching its first iPhone App which allows you to configure your ideal version of the new Rolls-Royce Ghost – a model that costs from £192,500, to see a few pictures of the car and to find the closest dealer.

The main issue I have with this is: why would they do something like that? The App is indeed well conceived, the pictures are nice – although the 3D version of the car looks pretty cheap – but it doesn’t match any need. The impression it gives is: Rolls-Royce’s marketing team really wanted to do something social media/mobile oriented so they did an iPhone App.

When Apple decided to launch its App Store, it was in the aim that Apps would be created to match a need – even a useless one. Rolls-Royce is a fantastic brand with an amazing history, a brand that has always been some sort of a symbol, the exemplary British Lifestyle. Is this all they’ve got for us non Rolls-Royce drivers? Cause let’s be honest, if the aim was to speak only to Rolls-Royce buyers, they would have developed something completely private, very exclusive, that would be deeply constructed for them.

Here is what a customer said about it on the App Store:

When a company decide to enter the whole social media/smartphone wave, it should develop its actions in order to reach a precise aim that is fully included into their global brand strategy.

Another brand made a pretty incomplete move into the social media world: Tissot, with its Augmented Reality App.

You could tell me that it is the future? Sure, but when you are a Swiss watchmaker promoting a certain number of values, traditions & quality, should you be trying to catch people’s attention through some sort of buzz? I mean an Augmented Reality App today means cutting a piece of paper and putting it around your wrist. Is this really the experience a 160 year old Swiss watchmaker wish to provide to its customers?

You don’t buy a watch as you buy a T-shirt; buying a watch should be the product of an experience where the product will have been selected among others. If the Augmented Reality App had been developed towards a whole buying process – allowing customers to get a better look at what a Tissot watch is, then I’d say it makes sense. If customers had already picked their precise model and they were using the Augmented Reality App to choose the colour of their bracelet, then it would feel right.

Today, it looks like Tissot is just trying to make a buzz, hoping people will associate this with innovation in order to both enhance the brand awareness and to reinforce the brand’s long time innovation tradition. But when you do look at the introductive video or when you watch the Selfridges’ animation – one of London’s most luxurious department stores – it looks more as if Dannon was giving away free samples of its latest yogurt.

As long as you are selling an exclusive product, you shouldn’t get into the buzz process as it won’t have a long term impact on your brand. Sure, people – after trying it – will get to know what Tissot is and might associate the brand with innovation but if you ask me, the distinction between a gadget and real useful technology is rather small and I am not sure how both Rolls-Royce & Tissot would like their name to be associated with the term gadget.

I am not saying that luxury brands should stay away from iPhone Apps & Augmented Reality Apps – as for instance Gucci did pretty well with its Little Black Book iPhone App – but it should all be conceived toward a precise and easy to understand aim that looks like if it had been conceived from the beginning of the strategy, not as a last minute attempt.

Luxury brands must be careful about how they deal with their image and what they decide to unveil. Remaining out of the game is clearly not an option anymore, but each campaign, each move, should be thought as a part of the global strategy aiming for a precise objective and not just to make a point. Otherwise the impact could be very different from the expected results.

Social media cannot be seen as just a trend anymore, nor as a new way to do marketing. Social media is both a social phenomenon that translates the changes happening in our society and an innovative tool which can be used for marketing, communication, sales, PR, social CRM purposes. But it remains a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The luxury industry still has a lot to learn about web 2.0 and must try to understand not why but how they can handle it.

Yesterday saw the opening of the new Louis Vuitton London flagship and the brand demonstrated how social could be exploited in order to make a local event, a global one.

What was all the fuss about?

Louis Vuitton  has re-opened its New Bond Street shop or Maison as Yves Carcelle explained – it is not a regular store. The Maison is ”Reflecting Louis Vuitton’s art-de-vivre and savoir-faire, conceived as the home of a collector . . . [it] gives visitors opportunities to discover new and exciting experiences.” This new Maison shows the Louis Vuitton belief that retail is all about emotion. Louis Vuitton wanted to renew with the fundamentals of luxury: making your customers dream about your brand. Luxury is not only about price and quality but first and foremost about the dream, about an “art de vivre”, a way of life.

This is where the Louis Vuitton strategy lied yesterday with the re-opening of their London flagship and the execution went very well, blurring the boundaries between art and fashion. A huge self-portrait by Gilbert and George hangs between the two walls of men’s tailoring. The top-floor is an “apartment” which is reserved for special client. They can make their selections in private. This apartment boasts a Basquiat, a Koons, another Gilbert and George, and two Richard Prince pieces.

The main question for LV was: how can render this opening as an exceptional event, worth the attention from a global audience? (Again the question is not why but how).

Of course with such as brand as LV, the traditional use of PR and communication makes any opening a very special event. The muses of the brand, many famous people and some trendy Londoners were invited to assist the event. But this type of event is extremely exclusive and only a limited number of happy few actually get to see what is happening in the shop – the rest of the crowd remaining outside.

An aspirational brand such as LV has fans all over the world and the opening of a new boutique is something that interest all of them: it showcases the latest trends coming from the brand, what direction it is lately taking, and they want to know everything happening with this brand they love; whether they are – potential – customers or not.

In our current societies, we have a lot to learn from brands like Disney, which focus on making people dream. In an article written by Agenda Inc. agency, entitled What can the luxury brands learn from Cinderella?, they explain that “in an increasingly crowded luxury marketplace, luxury brands should remember that it’s the story not the product that sells, and that it’s the story that represents the biggest element of differentiation from the competitive set.”

Yesterday, Louis Vuitton did a great job at completing this mission thanks to the use of social media; they enabled users who are fans of Louis Vuitton to be a part of this exclusive crowd as they live streamed the event on their Facebook page. They succeeded to engage with their community by living the Louis Vuitton dream.

They first got people excited by releasing a small amount of information about the event through their Facebook fan page:.

They also created  an event on Facebook that is similar to an invitation you would receive to go to the actual event.

And spreading the word on their Twitter account:

The result?

Enabling all the fans of Louis Vuitton to see the London Maison Opening, live from the Red Carpet on Facebook.

During more than 3 hours, Alexa Chung was the speaker to introduce the new Louis Vuitton “Maison” and interviewed many of the very exclusive guests, asking them about the brand and what it represents for them.

A Facebook app dedicated to this special event was created on Facebook. This very clever app was live streaming. It offered you the possibility to update your status with news about the event, comment on the video – and thus interact with worldwide users doing the same as you which reinforces the feeling of belonging to a community. The camera icon – as you can see on the image above – allowed you to take pictures from the live show. These pictures were then sent to a new Facebook album created on your profile. What is extremely clever is that this album would – as something new – directly appear on your news feed, exposing your Facebook friends to this incredible quality content.

This example should clearly be watched by other luxury brands – whether they are focused on High Fashion or not, as it provides key learnings on how these brands can master the art of social media:

- Social is not an impossible challenge. With limited costs – regarding the digital part – it achieved amazing results. The one rule to respect is to use social as a tool to reach a define aim which is part of the brand’s marketing strategy

- Luxury brands have to understand that people who are Facebook users are not only millennials. Everyone is on Facebook; especially the affluents who are the target audience. Luxury brands need to adapt and build a new kind of relationship with their customers who want to be more engaged with their favorite brand. Social is a way to create a more one – to – one relationship with your audience as social media is built on people.

- Luxury brands must understand that recreating the luxury experience online is key. They need to get people thinking of this question Alexa Chung was asking the attendants yesterday: “What is the Louis Vuitton Ethos?”

- The last advice would be that luxury brands must remain innovative. The luxury industry has always been divided between its heritage, its tradition and the necessity to remain ahead of the game, to be modern brands. Luxury brands must remain as creative as possible, especially to adapt to their users who are now spending more and more time on social platforms, discussing about their brand and consuming the brands’ content.

Luxury brands have always attracted people as they are focused on the products but are more culture-centric. The launch of a new store is always an event. But yesterday, Louis Vuitton really succeeded to make it really special for a vast number of people thanks to its great understanding of social media. As Marc Jacobs explained, this event was “like a catwalk” and the amount of exclusive content created for the event made it exceptional for anyone who watched it.

Louis Vuitton did very well because they understood that social media should not be used as an end in itself, but as a new and extremely powerful communication tool where your community does all the work.

Why is it such an issue for luxury brand?

Luxury is all about influence. Of course, there should be a guarantee of style and quality (although not always the case) but what makes a brand luxury is the influence that the people associated with it have on others.

Since the time when in 1956 Grace Kelly was carrying a creation from Hermes, the bag became the most famous item from the French high fashion house, the “Kelly bag”.  This bag was created in the 30′s but really became an object of desire once she had been seen with it.

Luxury has always had something to do with muse, stars and influential people, as that is the way luxury brand make customers dream. Luxury brand creations and products are made for those people but can also only really exist thanks to them.

Of course the real influence still exists, social network have been a reality before the invention of the web 2.0 and always will be. The huge difference now with the development of the social media is the scale: before, a star was seen with her new bag by maybe 500 people in the street, and thousands of people in magazines. Now, we are talking about millions of people if it is on facebook, Twitter or Youtube.

The best example of such a phenomena, and how it has been well understood by a luxury brand is the “Art Of the Trench”.

Based on the notion of influence, understanding that the best way to promote your product is through influential people wearing it (for no fee). They have nearly reached 1 million visits around more than 150 countries with visitors staying on more than 5 minutes. What does it mean? Instead of having your trench promoted by an influential wearing it in the streets of London, Paris or New York, Burberry have brought those same people together and offered at the same time a quick look into the world of Burberry and who is wearing the Burberry trench…

The information also travels quicker, everywhere in the world, meaning that it can be a huge success if your digital and marketing strategy is strong. If done wrong though it can also quickly become a disaster (remember the Vichy case, introducing a new product through a fake blog by a fake young Parisian party-girl in 2005, for more information view this article).

If it can reach so many people in such a short time, the big mistake of a lot of brands -luxury or not-  is to expect the social media to result in extraordinary sales revenue that equals the social web’s mass-based appeal.

It doesn’t change the fact that social media has become a huge issue and challenge for luxury brands because as for luxury it is about influence, relationship, references…And blogs are the most explosive social media platform at the moment.

What should luxury brands be doing about blogs?

We are not going to present all the possibilities -the good and bad ones- but only a recent example which was a collaboration between a fashion social media platform and one of the most famous luxury brands in the world. It seems to have been quite well done and now shows some luxury brands have started to understand that doing social media online shouldn’t be separate from offline strategy, that a digital strategy is not something which has to be done by just interns, but has to be part of the marketing, PR, and communication strategy.

Ykone & Chanel in Saint-Tropez

From the 10^th to the 12^th of May, Chanel has been organizing a huge fashion event, for the fashion show “Croisière”, inviting lots of photographers, journalists, actress, models and of course Baptiste Giabiconi, Vanessa Paradis –the new Chanel muse-, or Diane Kruger to name only few of them, in Saint-Tropez.

The purpose of those two days in the French Riviera was not only to present the new Spring-Summer collection, but to present what is the Chanel world, what does it means to wear Chanel clothes, what is the lifestyle which goes with the brand. Choosing Saint-Tropez was part of the strategy, as this place used to play an important role in Karl Lagerfeld life and in the fashion life also.

How to spread the world without losing the exclusivity of this event?

Building a partnership with a new fashion platform –a social fashion experience- and inviting the co-director and blogger, Mathieu Lebreton, to spend those 3-days with the hype world of Chanel.

Those 3-days were then experienced “live-broadcasting” thanks to a special microsite build for the event on Ykone, and to their twitter.

A good strategy to connect the online to the offline, to make people dream about your brand, to make them discover what it is to live the Chanel experience…It is also a way for the luxury brand to build a closer relationship with its customer. Luxury has to make people dream…and with such a strategy, everyone is living the Chanel experience online, thinking that they could also be there.

With such a good offline/online strategy, I definitely think that Chanel reached this goal.

Tagged: art of the trench, Baptiste Giabiconi, blog, burberry, Chanel, Diane Kruger, digital strategy, fashion, Grace Kelly, Hermes, Karl Lagerfeld, kelly bag, Luxury brands, Mathieu Lebreton, saint tropez, social media, twitter, Vanessa Paradis, Vichy, ykone ]]> http://luxurysocialmedia.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/what-should-luxury-brands-be-doing-about-blogs-the-example-of-chanel-and-ykone/feed/ 2 chanel saint-tropez 2010 luxurysocialmedia grace kelly Art of the Trench Ykone escale a saint tropez Ykone twitter http://luxurysocialmedia.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/luxury-shoes-making-a-clever-use-of-foursquare-the-jimmy-choo-trainer-hunt/ http://luxurysocialmedia.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/luxury-shoes-making-a-clever-use-of-foursquare-the-jimmy-choo-trainer-hunt/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:30:39 +0000 Alexandre http://luxurysocialmedia.wordpress.com/?p=223 Read more]]> While most luxury brands have troubles figuring how to use social media, afraid to loose this “feeling of exclusivity” you are getting while buying a luxurious product, some brands have been very creative to benefit from this extremely powerful communication way.

Jimmy Choo, the very exclusive shoemaker, just launched a treasure hunt in London using Foursquare to celebrate the launch of its new line of trainers.

How does it work? Basically, the trainers will be checked in at various trendy & exclusive venues via Foursquare such as Lounge Lover, Floridita and the members-only Mortons. And in order to win you must get there and find the trainers before they leave the place.

What will happen for real? Well, London is a very large city so it’ll be hard for anyone to try to move as fast as the new location appears. Most probably, Jimmy Choo’s regular customers frequent more or less the same places as the girl carrying the new trainers. So it is very possible that regular Jimmy Choo girls get the free pair of trainer.

This whole campaign is very clever to be honest. First, it is a very innovative and effective way to communicate so fans of the brand will rely the information all over the Internet allowing Jimmy Choo to launch a new line with a lot more coverage than it would have gotten with ads in regular magazines for instance. Second, as Londoners are one of the most connected population on the planet, engaging with fans both online and offline will do nothing more than raise the brand awareness. Third, the brand is communicating by allowing its fans to learn how to lead a Jimmy Choo lifestyle which is one of the points we have been insisting on.

Jimmy Choo has always been one of these names you hear on TV through shows such as Sex & The City, Ugly Betty or in fashonistas movies like The Devil Wears Prada. And this campaign is maintaining this hip image: young & fabulous, adding a little game was a great insight to get tons of coverage via classic networks and via the web.

If you want to be part of the game, follow the trainers:

Foursquare: www.foursquare.com/user/CatchAChoo

Twitter: www.twitter.com/CatchAChoo

A new type of social media

This new luxury campaign through social media emphazises the huge developpement of a new type of social media: geolocalisation on mobile. This new way to do marketing or to exchange is both in the trend of  web-mobile and social media.A microblogging, a way to connect with people or to promote for companies, useless for some, a great tool for others…At least, people talk about it.

Foursquare has been created in 2009 and has now more than a million of users.

The new “french version” has been created: Plyce seems to be the new competitor!

Everyone wants to be “in” but you can’t just send people to your website. In order to raise your brand awareness and build a strong online presence, you must develop specific content that communicates about the brand’s lifestyle for instance.

This is definitely a new era for luxury brands: they must go online and share with their customers.

To get in the trend, a lot of luxury brands are developing their own micro-sites, non-commercial but attractive. A new way to discover the brand, the world around the brand, new collections or new products…

But in such a competitive market, how to differentiate your brand?

The new trend: using a famous photographer, an influential blogger such as Burberry with it’s Art Of The Trench website where people are photographed with their Trench by the famous blogger The Sartorialist…

So let’s discover the new luxury micro-site: The Journey of a Wardrobe, by Louis Vuitton and the Selby.

The Journey of a Wardrobe is a way for Louis Vuitton to share and open its own world to its customers. It remains a relation of brand talking to its customer, not listening. It’s not using social media in its true sense, but at least, it shows an effort from the brand to open and to change its relationship with its customer. The customer is not allowed to talk to Louis Vuitton yet, but at least, he can discover the intimacy of their favorite brand.

Louis Vuitton worked with the famous photographer, The Selby, for the photograph and illustration.

The Paris portion of Louis Vuitton’s The Journey of a Man’s Wardrobe by The Selby is now launched, featuring images of the Louis Vuitton’s home and museum, an LV workshop, the LV mens fittings and backstage photos from the men’s fashion show.

Others cities will be featured too…

Check out the schedule below:
Shanghai launches April 28th
Tokyo launches May 5th
London launches May 19th
New York launches May 12th

Indeed, if the company still belongs to its creator such as Zappos than for sure, as he is the face of the company, he is the only one who can held the company’s Twitter account. As the company is his own creation, he also represents the values and everything that makes the company’s identity. We could easily imagine that the designers of a new fashion line could hold their company’s Twitter account.

In today’s social media web environment, luxury companies are struggling to find the proper solution to perpetuate this exclusive experience they procure within their shops and via their ads in the appropriate magazines. But what do customers really want? People want to know what it is to be a part of this company, what is the kind of lifestyle you are supposed to maintain. What better way to diffuse this particular experience than via the creator’s Twitter account? Customers will thus be learning about the stress coming from the fashion show and everything linked to a creation process, which develops at the same time a strong brand awareness.

But what about established luxury companies such as Chanel for instance? Who is supposed to hold this account?

If it is just the company talking then usually it is not much more than an RSS feed which makes it pretty boring for a Twitter account and which would also means under-exploiting the twitter tool as a marketing tool.

In order to perpetuate this particular experience that only luxury brands can procure, this sense of uniqueness, you need to diffuse the kind of lifestyle you company tries to give to its customers.

It should then be someone who actually lives and represents the company but not a public figure. Karl Lagerfeld would not hold Chanel’s Twitter account as his identity is too strong, not mentioning he has his own brand and twitter account for his brand. It should be someone with less public identity. Then, the day the person goes, the company Twitter account cannot die. Companies must be very careful with how much they invest into their public faces. Via the web and social media, unsatisfied customers can react and modify a brand’s reputation pretty fast. Plus we all know how much a crowd is influential, so we could imagine a designer employed by a luxury company using its Twitter account to get where he/she wants.

Though I have seen a pretty good example of how a company should deal with its Twitter account in order to avoid making it boring but also to avoid giving too much importance to the person holding the account.

It’s the Twitter account for the 4A’s: http://twitter.com/4as

Bio: The official twitter account for the 4A’s, the American Association of Advertising Agencies. Account is managed by our Web Editor, Ted LaBarbera.

The way the account is actually handled is still very shy in my opinion as what readers really want to know is how is the life in the advertising world. But on the principle, I like their bio very much and I think companies should do it this way.

Let’s have a look at a few luxury companies twitter account:

The Lady Dior Twitter Account was only created to support the Lady Dior campaign – which makes it more or less an RSS feed. This way to deal with the twitter account is ok here because it is not the company twitter account.

The LouisVuitton US Twitter Account is no more than a RRS feed also. It is exclusively talking about Louis Vuitton and there is no engagement with their customers. They are using twitter to tell a story…not to listen.

The Baume & Mercier Twitter Account who follows almost 6,000 people is using its account as a Press Review which is not a bad idea. But there is still a very limited interaction and we don’t know much more about the company’s spirit and value.

Luxury companies should understand that their readers want to be a part of this world, want to learn about its habits, its rules & its values. To do so, companies will need to put a face behind the account because Twitter is a social media, meaning that there should be interaction and engagement.

Social media shouldn’t be just another way to advertize but a new marketing tool where customers and companies could interact and learn from each others.

By Milton Pedraza,

CEO and Founder of The Luxury Institute,

for Luxury Society

There is no doubt that luxury brands have been slow to embrace the Internet in all its dimensions.

From search engine optimization and marketing, placing ads and e-commerce, the luxury industry is clearly not an online innovator. In fact, the industry lags mainstream retail by a wide margin. This is a reality the industry can ill afford in a severe economic crisis.

Old habits die hard, especially when true luxury brands have been so successful without participating in the online revolution. Many Luxury Institute surveys, along with common sense experience, document the fact that luxury consumers have embraced all of the Internet’s benefits and are clamoring for more from luxury. Luxury must, and will, embrace the online world wholeheartedly, on its own terms.

Here are 7 Rules of the Road that will help make the journey a profitable one. The rules are inspired by rich conversations with top executives at luxury conferences and one-on-one meetings with all the critical constituencies involved in online luxury.

1. The European luxury brand leaders must let the children lead for a change.

European luxury brands are mainly family-owned, or behave like family-owned enterprises. This has been a great source of strength and brand consistency and integrity for generations. Yet today, the rapid morphing of the Internet, its effects on the cultural and behavioral habits of the wealthy and a severe economic crisis all require that luxury icons behave like flexible, adaptable and sustainable organisms. Most European luxury firms are top-down, command and control organizations built for the industrial age. They are run autocratically, usually by the creative genius, who is the heart and soul of the brand, and a few trusted insiders. It is time for those leaders to open up, have the courage to relinquish a degree of control to the younger generations of leaders at the front lines across the world, and allow them to experiment with online innovations. In fact, these wise mentors should require that the young leaders of luxury not just copy, but significantly surpass, the innovations of Amazon and other mainstream web retail leaders. Luxury must, and will, deliver far more online than the average retailer.

2. The interactive and digital agencies that serve luxury need to innovate beyond the commoditized mainstream.

The interactive agencies, by and large, are encouraging the luxury brands to adopt exactly what the mainstream retailers are doing online. That is insufficient. It is true that it is hard enough to convince luxury brands to adopt and meet the standards of the best mainstream retail brands online. However, it is absolutely legitimate for luxury brand leaders to expect their agencies to innovate and customize for luxury rather than copy what best-in-class mainstream retailers are doing. Luxury requires a highly surgical level of differentiation in online customer experience, and luxury brands have a legitimate right to demand that level of performance. It is time for the irreverent 30 year-old geniuses at the Web agencies to prove they can go beyond commodity functionality in the luxury space. Commodity products may have worked for Bill Gates, but luxury is a different species, and a valued client such as Bill should get a truly unique and customized online luxury experience from any luxury brand.

3. The luxury media needs to innovate online beyond editorial plugs, banner ads and videos.

As the print world loses its momentum, luxury brands are asking what media is doing online to innovate its way out of a death spiral. Most luxury media brands are essentially online versions of their print brethren, only they get updated faster and have a few moving parts like all other mainstream media. Both wealthy consumers and luxury brands have the right to expect that luxury media deliver a breakthrough content and advertising experience that is beyond copy/pasting the print text, photos and videos onto a web site. And it is not enough just to aggregate wealthy consumers for a living. Instead, they should be generating extraordinarily unique and exclusive customer and advertiser experiences online that both consumers and luxury advertisers will find worthy of paying a premium.

4. Luxury CEOs and their senior management teams need a crash course on the fundamentals of the Internet.

On a scale of 1-10, today’s luxury CEO’s and most of their executive teams probably rate a generous 5 on Internet knowledge and expertise. In a high-growth environment, these executives were too busy growing the business via traditional channels. In a severe downturn, they are busy making sure the business survives. Internet innovation is not on the list of the top three most critical courses of action needed to run the business in a severe economic crisis. And yet, the Internet will become the flagship store and strategic centerpiece for most luxury brands (and, yes, there will be successful exceptions), although many executive teams do not yet realize this. What is needed is profound, objective, unbiased education on consumer habits and online selling and marketing options. Only then will senior luxury executives be able to make strategic and tactical decisions on the current and future customer experience. And only by educating themselves first, will they be able to lead their brands to innovation beyond the commoditized customer experiences one finds today on the Internet.

5. Luxury executives need to get over the “lack of control online” issue. The truth is that the only thing they control is their customer experience.

The heated discussions about controlling your brand online, especially what is said about your luxury brand online, are pure nonsense. In an open and transparent online and offline world, the only things you can control are your business values and ethics, your offerings, your business model and the customer experience that you choose to deliver. If you deliver extraordinary customer experiences, the natural “buzz” surrounding your brand will be overwhelmingly positive. The web will amplify your reputation, good or bad, among consumers and other constituents. While public relations tactics can help, the truth will eventually be known. If the truth is that you deliver extraordinary experiences, detractors will be drowned out and many advocates will come to your immediate defense. The opposite is also true. So, get over the “lack of control” issue online and start innovating. It’s a non-issue.

6. Rapid Cycle Testing and Learning is the only way to go with online innovations.

Beware of Internet gurus, especially the ones that tell you that everything online should be free while charging you $10k per day for their sage advice. They cannot predict the future or tell you what will work. You will need that crash course on the fundamentals, but you need to know that, ultimately, the only way to go in an organic online world is to experiment your way to success. Fail smart, fail fast and fail cheap is the mantra. Start innovating with the confidence that you can invest small amounts to test what will work. You also need to know that most things will not work. Learn to accept failure in order to achieve success. Finally, if anyone tells you that you have to bet big dollars on any one online innovation, fire them!

7. You have to be reasonable with Return on Investment.

Many luxury executives who have been spending significant sums on print, events and other non-measurable marketing spends over the years are now demanding that the Internet deliver instant measurable ROI. You have the right to expect concrete returns from any investment, but the reality is that the profit impact of most marketing investments cannot be measured to the nth degree. The Internet comes closest, but still fails the perfection test. Give Internet marketing an opportunity to prove itself and it should deliver solid results above print and other offline marketing investments. If you are committed to testing and learning you will control the dollars in a way that allows you to innovate economically and intelligently.

In many corners of luxury, there is optimism that perhaps the worst has passed, and, that while profound changes have occurred, we will once again become leading innovators who deliver massive value to our clients. Online marketing and selling is an opportunity we need to embrace with vigor and skill. We need to go beyond mainstream retailers into new breakthroughs. A few years from now, the friendly, heated discussions about luxury online will be seen as just another step towards the rapid evolution of the true luxury industry.

Starting with a lot of digital projects such as The Second Life in 2007, micro sites for specific products such as the one for its new perfume “Tresor In Love”, Lancôme has decided to go further in the social trend!

First they started with their campaign “Lancôme Make Up” using Twitter to give news, and the “Make-Up Blog” for sharing the best-of make-up. It’s not really the brand that is talking to their customers, but Aaron De Mey, Lancôme make-up artistic director giving his tips. They also launched a professional blog for make-up.

After starting blogging, Balistik*Art and Lancôme organized in 2009 a PR event in Paris with 16 international bloggers and the two new Lancôme icons, Juliette Binoche and Laura Morante. It was another proof of the important of digital and social media in the Lancôme communication strategy.

Lancôme Paris also has its own twitter account and now nearly each new product –cream or perfume – has its own micro-site. They are also using storytelling 2.0.

But it was the first time Lancôme developed a real “social media” platform, The Most Precious eyes, based on customers experience and the sharing of people’s tips.

It’s not anymore about the brand telling the story about cosmetics; people talk themselves to others about their own experience of the brand.

And it ‘s an important moment for the luxury cosmetic brand to listen to its customers…