Social Media… Just a luxury ?
Marketing Week recently ran a cover story about luxury brands seeking mass appeal by embracing social media, which emphasised the importance of achieving accessibility without compromising exclusivity.[1] With the tragic events in Japan casting a shadow over the world’s largest market for luxury goods, and the second, China, starting to chip away at advertising by aspirational brands[2], now is the time to get the balance right.
We decided to look at the world’s most valuable luxury brands and find out what they are doing to limit their exposure, and appeal to the masses. Taking the luxury marques from Interbrand’s list of the 100 best global brands[3], we compared their brand value with their social media fanbase and press coverage. Global Facebook fans and Twitter followers were found using the networks’ inbuilt search, while our free monitoring tool Pickanews[4] provided the number of editorial and advertising mentions of each brand across four European countries (France, Italy, Spain and the UK).
The first thing we found is that there is no correlation between a brand’s value and its media profile, either on- or off-line. It is no surprise that a simple, direct relationship doesn’t exist, given the complexity of the formula for brand value[5] – which incorporates financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of brand in the purchase decision process and the strength of the brand, itself made up of 10 components.
For example, Tiffany & Co is cited by both Interbrand and Marketing Week as a brand that has lost points on Authenticity (one of the indexes of brand strength) by shifting its focus towards “accessible luxury for all”, but it has maintained its 2009 ranking as the 76th most valuable brand. Its relatively small media profile may signify that consumers and editors are unimpressed by this watering down of the brand’s exclusive status, but it may be the result of something else entirely. Instead, our results offer a chance to compare luxury brands’ different approaches to print and social media – are they managing to strike the right balance between accessibility and exclusivity?
LVMH, the parent group of Louis Vuitton, seems to be doing just that. Appearing at number 16 in the overall list of best brands and first out of the luxury marques, it has become a byword for status. The universal charm of the Louis Vuitton brand in particular means that it is well represented by the press in all four tracked countries, while its competitors tend to perform better in their home states (e.g. Armani in Italy, Burberry in the UK). The brand has gathered the third greatest social audience (2m+ on Facebook, 40,000+ on Twitter) thanks it part to its existing fame – presumably they gain fans whenever Kanye West refers to himself as the “Louis Vuitton Don” – but certainly without compromising its aspirational values.
As Franck Sagne, LVMH’s head of digital marketing for wine and spirits, told Marketing Week, “we can’t hide ourselves in an ivory tower but we have to remain precious and exclusive”. He argues that brands can use social media to drive aspiration over accessibility, to affirm luxury consumer’s brand choices and to help consumers become “connoisseurs”. As long as the true purchaser remains at the heart of a brand’s strategy, the fact that millions of other people cluster around its social properties can only be a benefit.
Sagne takes a measured approach with LVMH brand Moët. The “Most Loved Champagne” has protected its tweets[6] so that users must submit a request before becoming one of its (fewer than 400) followers; it has also developed a Facebook page[7] that doesn’t allow its 60,000 fans to comment or contribute, except to specific campaigns and under strict conditions (e.g. through the Moët Miami app[8]). Only the brand itself knows whether this strategy is delivering users of the right demographic, or paying off in terms of key business events (Keep Me Informeds, event attendance, sales), but this is exactly what the experts mean when they talk about using social media to create an exclusive experience.
By contrast, Burberry seems far more open to courting the mass market. Press coverage of the brand, centred in the UK, reflects its broad appeal: from catwalk reports in national broadsheets to classified ads in local newspapers reselling Burberry baby clothes. This popularity has attracted huge social audiences of 4.5m fans on Facebook, and over 170,000 followers on Twitter – more than three times as many as its closest competitor, Gucci. And yet Burberry hasn’t lost sight of its identity, with campaigns like the Facebook-enabled Art of the Trench[9] bringing the online conversation back to the brand’s iconic designs.
All of which proves that it’s not the size of your media profile, it’s what you do with it that counts. The world’s most valuable luxury brands show that it is possible to become accessible to all, while still retaining the aspirational values that appeal to a core market of buyers – or, in the case of Moët, to actively use social media to reinforce the exclusivity of the brand. Only time will tell which strategy works the best, but one thing is clear: for aspirational consumer brands, social media is no longer a luxury.
About us
Press Index is a leading provider of media intelligence across the key European markets. Over 50,000 media sources – print, online and broadcast – are delivered to over 4,500 corporate and PR agency clients across Europe. Our business solutions include an Analysis department, specialised in quantitative and qualitative evaluation of your media coverage.
[1] http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/cover-stories/removing-exclusive-tags-risks-permanent-damage/3024723.article
[2] http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/03/22/19918-luxury-advertising-banned-in-beijing/
[3] http://www.interbrand.com/en/knowledge/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-2008/best-global-brands-2010.aspx
[4] http://www.pickanews.com/qespresspub/usr/FRA/jsp/PRESSWelcome.jsp
[5] http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-methodology/Overview.aspx
[6] http://twitter.com/#!/moet
[7] http://www.facebook.com/moet
[8] http://www.facebook.com/moet?v=app_179636062072558
[9] http://artofthetrench.com/
Print is Dead! Long Live Print! A Pickanews Study
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With the ubiquity of social networks and their transformative effects on our lives and the world at large, it’s tempting to see them as the predominant media. In the UK, around half of the population is on Facebook[1] and social media account for 13% of all website visits.[2] As we watch, these networks are enabling global citizens to share critical information and challenge corrupt regimes. Surely the death of traditional media is nigh?
Well, no. Although the sharing of stories is increasingly happening across social networks, big media (print, broadcast and major websites) still dictates the news agenda. Recent academic research into trending topics on Twitter discovered that content generated by traditional news sources is far more likely to trend than anything else.[3] In this way, newspapers and magazines retain much of the influence they held in the days before social media.
But while established print media continue to set the agenda, social networks are becoming an important source of, and outlet for, news – and increasingly, the subject of stories themselves. A study using our complimentary monitoring service Pickanews revealed that, of the nearly 4,000 UK publications available to search for free, more than a third mentioned Twitter during January; the same is true for Facebook. Pickanews allows us to dive into these mentions to find out what kind of publications are talking about social media, and what they are saying.
Using a combination of Pickanews’ built-in graphs and the article excerpts available on the site, it is possible to explore the contexts in which the press discusses Facebook and Twitter. National and regional newspapers provide the majority of mentions, reporting on the use of social networks to organize everything from the Egypt revolution to local pub crawls, on cultural concerns like cyber-bullying, and news about the sites themselves – such as the latest round of investment in Facebook.
Pickanews shows subtle variations in the way the periodicals report on the different social networks. Facebook generates less coverage in the trade press than in consumer titles, which include calls to action encouraging readers to find the magazines, and the brands they feature, on Facebook. On Twitter, the reverse is true, as trade publications push readers to the microblogging site for concise, continual updates. Read More…
Wikileaks: Media Monitoring in a World Without Walls
Copyright Photo Elias Guerra. Flickr FxyLxy – Text James Glazebrook – Follow us on twitter @PickanewsUK
Wikileaks and social media were big news in 2010, a year that ended with Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year despite hacktivist Julian Assange stealing the public vote.
When asked to draw parallels between his and Assange’s organisations, Zuckerberg erred on the side of understatement: “we mostly make so you can understand what’s going on with the people around you because we think that that helps you connect with them more broadly”. Whether Zuck admits it or not, we live in an age where data, personal or otherwise, is directly shared and openly available. But what are the implications for media monitoring?
Social media is already eroding the traditional public relations model of the media as gatekeeper, controlling access to consumers. In the past, PR professionals would channel their communications through a publication, station or site, in the hope that their chosen vessel would a) carry the intended messages, and b) deliver them to the target audience. Measuring success was then a case of building an approximate picture of the audience and its attitude using tools like demographics and market research.
Today, the open frontier of social media represents both an opportunity and a challenge. Any company or brand can now enter into a direct dialogue with its target audience, simply by going where they hang out, talking to them and listening to their responses. Tracking these conversations allows communications professionals to tap into, and harness, consumer opinion. However, given the sheer volume of buzz on social platforms, effective monitoring can only be done by working with experienced analysts who can cut through the noise and generate real insights.
Click here to find out how we can help.
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- History of Media Monitoring
- Is Google all the media monitoring you need?
- What can we learn from the blogs run by the UK’s top PR consultancies?
- The UK’s Top PR Agencies on Facebook
- Twitter doesn’t threaten the news. It makes the news. A Press Index study
- Social Media… Just a luxury ?
- The Rules of Engagement: Pitching to Bloggers
- History of Media Monitoring
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