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a luxury brand in this mix and expecting to have the same results is quite
tricky, except the luxury brand is prepared to be entirely open, transparent
and accepting of both positive and negative content. Most luxury brands are
not ready for this. It is true that the active users of social networks are seek-
ing brand engagement and intimate relations but I believe that luxury brands
can fulfil their expectations without directly creating blogs or jumping on the
bandwagon of social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and so on.
Integrating the social web in luxury is similar to learning a new language
at an advanced age. It's a real challenge for luxury brands, especially as most
brands have been used to communicating mainly through images and little
text for a long time. Today the social web obliges communicating mainly
using words and luxury brands have to learn to evoke desires and dreams
through text. How do you make people dream using 140 characters on
Twitter? Here lies the main challenge.
The answer is in understanding the phenomenon of the social web and
how it is transforming people's mind-sets and the attitudes of an entire gen-
eration. This will lead luxury brands to understand the right approach and
platform to adopt. The majority of luxury brands are yet to grasp the world
of social networks.
I've seen several official communities created by luxury brands on web-
sites like Facebook and My Space and most of them are poorly executed and
they generally do not respect the codes of social networks like having a real
two-way conversation with the people on the networks. Social websites pro-
vide people with an individual voice and a face, and it is quite difficult for
corporate bodies to reproduce this. However I strongly recommend that lux-
ury brands should closely monitor social websites as the information gath-
ered on these networks are essential for tracking the evolution of consumer
mind-sets and devising communications approaches. With the evolution of
technology and the possible expansion of social networks in new dimen-
sions, there will be several more possibilities. But the most important factor
is to have a strategy.
6. How can a luxury brand select the right products to sell online?
Should they sell everything online?
This is also another question I am asked all the time! I think that luxury
e-retail should be approached very carefully, as there are several issues linked
to it. First, the purpose of e-retail should be established and some questions
should be answered: Is it purely for revenue generation? Is it a means of
brand communications and image reinforcement? Is it an avenue to increase
desire through inaccessibility? Is it a way to capture client data and reinforce
relationships? Is it a means of channel integration? The answers to these
should enable a luxury brand to decide whether to place the entire product
