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And in the meantime, what have luxury brands been doing online apart from
repeating the usual mantra, “We're developing our online communications
strategy which will soon be ready for us to share it with you”? The reality is
that the majority of luxury brands have been somewhat lost as to the strategies
to apply in executing effective online communications programs. Due to the
Internet being significantly different from the structured and somewhat impo-
sitional style of offline media with rules and codes that are transferred from
the media companies to the luxury brands and subsequently to the consumers,
there still lacks a consensus in online luxury communications. The most widely
adopted means remains banner and pop-up advertisements on media websites,
as an extended arm of the print glossies. Several brands like Louis Vuitton,
Yves Saint Laurent and Stella McCartney have recently boarded the Twitter
plane, while others like Sonia Rykiel have taken the blogging path and sev-
eral others have jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. The existing landscape
is so because for a long time luxury brands have been led to believe that people
access and relate to online media the same way that they relate to print media.
They have been sold the online version of the cost per thousand (CPM) model
through the number of clicks/unique visitors/page views per week/month/edi-
tion and all manner of other quantifying of the colossal fees charged for online
advertisements. None of these, however, point to real information on user pro-
files, behaviors, attitudes and interests but indicate quantitative measurements
that serve little purpose in evaluating the advert's effectiveness. This is hardly
enough for justifying online luxury ads expenditure and measuring their returns.
Online luxury communications is not about the same mass advertising approach
that is applied offline. It is about targeted and direct communications powered
by content that has a dual aspect of feedback, exchanges and collaborations
between the consumers and the brands and among consumers themselves. It is
time to throw the old style of relating with luxury clients out of the window.
There is no point in continuing to resist the reality that the Internet has brought
a form of direct access to luxury clients, which never existed before.
This is not to say that the mainstream media has lost its relevance or
that it will die off eventually. The media will remain pertinent in luxury
communications and will continue to play an important role in brand aware-
ness generation and brand image reinforcement. Luxury brands will still get
noticed in
Vogue
and
Elle
and new brands featured in
L'Officiel
and
In Style
will still get attention from the public, but this is no longer enough. The for-
mula has extended from these vital aspects to include more efficient ways
of reaching clients and potential segments in a direct manner online. And
the irony is that the luxury brands that do a good job of telling their stories
through the relevant online platforms and getting it heard by the right peo-
ple and buzzed about online will also attract the attention of the mainstream
media who will generate more news about it. When Christian Dior created a
one-off advertisement teaser on the virtual world Second Life for its jewelry
collection, it led to wide mainstream media coverage including a top spot
