Luxury brands - Are they taking digital and social media seriously?

To me, luxury brands seem perfectly suited to embrace social and digital media, using the platforms to extend their customer service engagement to a new level and improve their brand awareness by engaging with their audience.

Yet from previous searching for luxury brands using social media, I can see that this is still a market in its infancy.

I read a few months back of the Middlesbrough Player, Andrew Taylor, who has recently started a web based luxury suppliers directory in an attempt to reduce fraud among the football player community.

The Platinum Players site is now, I believe, live. I dropped them a note to see if they would give me a sneak peak into what they offer and how they've gone about doing it, but never received a response back from them. It must be very exclusive.

So instead I went hunting again, using Google and their very basic search syntax to see what I could dig up.


Dom Perignon

First up was the Dom Perignon site, not my personal choice of bubbled refreshment at the weekend, but still a very nice drink for those that like to partake in a little champers. A luxury for most, particularly under current economic circumstances.

First item that greets me on the Dom Perignon is an age verification request which, if honest, doesn't offend me or detract from my experience in the slightest. This is, after all, a product that can't be sold to individuals under the age of 18 in the UK so why not keep the content for over 18's?

The site behind the check is nice and has a luxurious feel about it, Eva Herzigova acting provocatively in luxurious surrounds. Low text content, high video content, lots of brand messages, I like it in the context of a luxury product.

I'm no big fan of Flash websites but this seems to suit the format, although the navigation fades too quickly, if you're using the right hand navigation items and then trying to access the sub-pages you have to use your wits.

But where's the social media I hear you cry!

Well, there isn't any. A quick search on Twitter for Dom Perignon returns no accounts except BroDomPerignon an odd comedic account following a few threads on Champagne in general; Dom Perignon itself belongs to a Japanese owner.

What I did find from visiting Brother Dom's account was a Twitter account for Veuve Clicquot.


Veuve Clicquot

What an entertaining account, seemingly enveloping the feeling of being involved in something exclusive and luxurious without the requirements for the feed to be subscription only.

Attending fashion parties and name dropping like there's no tomorrow the Veuve Clicquot account seems to be approaching Twitter in a way that wins my seal of approval.

With over 3000 followers, and a pretty much equal number of people they follow, they seem to have address my usual gripe of not allowing the account generate a community feel.

The Veuve Clicquot Twitter stream left me wanting to be a guest at all the parties they were visiting, surely this is what any social media engagement could aspire to.

Although I'd be crazy if I didn't realise it must be a whole lot easier to encourage this feeling of engagement when talking about champagne parties with the global fashionista than it might be for a commercial banking giant promoting its products and services.

That said, we must consider that it's about addressing the right audience, with the right tools, in the right manner. What that says about me I shudder to think . . .

Brava Veuve Clicquot!


American Express Centurion

American Express Centurion is the card to own if you're amongst the last of the big spenders.

Sadly I am not, so I was unable to go any further than the initial login screen. Although I was able to gain some information even from this visit that, I have got to say, disappointed me.

First up, the URL is hardly memorable, I would have thought American Express could have spent the time to make it a little more customised for their exclusive customers?

Equally, I'm not sure what the styling is like once you've logged in, but if you ask for help at the first screen you can forget about any continuity from the landing page with regards to design.

They don't seem to be using social media yet for their luxury arm of the business, although American Express have delved into social media for the parent company with a bespoke offering on their Open Forum. Open Forum utilises the likes of social media illuminati Guy Kawasaki to help with brand promotion and they seem to have the American Express Twitter URL reserved for some purpose yet to be revealed.

But they still don't seem to be addressing their luxury offering in social or digital media very well or, in fact, at all. They are obviously looking at ways to work the digital channel for them to pursue the Open Forum, perhaps they will turn their attention to the Centurion Card once they are more comfortable.


Burberry

While Burberry has achieved a rise in popularity due to its association with less than luxurious adoptions, I still see it as a luxury brand and I think the majority of their product prices and the quality of their products support this opinion.

Initial investigations found a nice site, not dissimilar to Dom Perignon's approach with a high level of visual content and also a Burberry Twitter account.

Looking at the content on the Twitter feed certainly doesn't lead me to think that this is anything other than an official brand feed. Although they could do with altering their style choice on Twitter, as you are unable to read details such as the website URL with the black font on the black background.

The feed seems relatively new, with only 15 tweets and a feed that was established only in July this year. To date I don't see much more than promotional posts about new products being released.

They have however in those few tweets tied in a few calls to other Twitter accounts and utilised hashtags which is promising to see.

I also followed one of the Twitter links which took me to a YouTube video of a recent Burberry fashion show. Clicking on the account link I found a Burberry YouTube account with 7 uploads and a completed profile that had been created in 2005 no less.

There seems to have been a recent burst of activity on the site, with new content and new followers. Is this the signs of a Burberry social media campaign in it's infancy?

There was however a comment on the site asking whether it was an official site, that had gone unanswered, but only for 2 days at the time of writing this. One issue with social media is that once you're out there, you need to manage all of these presences pro-actively, a factor that can put many off the adoption.

My investigation took me deeper into Burberry's on-line presence where I found Burberry's hub of social media operations, a Burberry Facebook account. With over 660,000 fans, this is a Facebook following to be proud of.

Listed on the site were the brand's Twitter and YouTube ID's, their videos were also uploaded from the YouTube account and they'd even got a Facebook campaign page developed in XFBML by the looks of it.

There still doesn't seem to be much of a conversation going on via the Facebook page, but it is allowing Burberry fans a good opportunity to view new products on the cat walk and for fans to provide feedback in the comments.

It almost seems that Burberry could justify having a Friendfeed account to allow all fans to access this aggregated content.

Equally it's disappointing not to see any reference to their social media activity on their web site or in fact vice versa, not many links from the Twitter feed back to the main website generating further traffic and interest.

Most of the activity didn't exploit much of the luxury feel that I gained from the Veuve Clicquot Twitter stream, but it's still early days for their Twitter feed.

All said, this is the first example I've found of a "luxury" brand really addressing the social and digital media market with any gusto and Burberry need to be congratulated for this.


Luxury Directory

The Luxury Directory Twitter feed seem to be a pre-dominance of content publication and not much customer engagement sadly.

To make matters worse a lot of the URL's in the feed were returning 404's. They seem to using a URL service called Eight7Teen which I had never encountered before, I checked the URL of Eight7Teen and all seemed to be okay.

I then tried to create a URL of my own via Eight7Teen, err err. I'm not sure what's going on with the service, but it certainly didn't seem to work for me. Luxury Directory need to investigate this and switch URL shortener if this is the issue it appears to be.

The Luxury Directory website also has a link to a Facebook profile, after visiting the profile it seems as though this is associated with the "La Dolce Vita" magazine. Which initially I couldn't seem to associate the ownership relationship between the two, until I noticed the e-mail address domain for the contact details.

"La Dolce Vita" is a travel magazine for individuals of high net worth looking for their next holiday location. A perfect domain for the luxury social media engagement that I'd spoken of in earlier posts, linking up with partners in locations and offering luxury services to readers upon arrival.

Sadly it doesn't seem as though "La Dolce Vita" are using this particular social media avenue, perhaps they can hook with Veuve Clicquot to offer champagne upon arrival?

It was good to see a luxury group using social media to address their audience, although I do think they could have got the brand family in tune a little better and also gained further value from their use of social media.


Other mentions

I tried finding any other specific luxury brands utilising social media, but my search wasn't very fruitful. I found a Twitter account for the Lamborghini Club of LA which seemed to be doing a good job of promoting the brand, but I am sure it will be from the Club's perspective and not an official brand perspective even if it does carry some form of official endorsement.

This club perspective was further enforced when I looked at the "Model" section on the Club's website expecting to see official Lamborghini car images (how naive of me).

While I didn't see many luxury brands utilising the social media channel or even the more traditional web channel (since when has the web become traditional!) I did see plenty of evidence of other aggregation of luxury content.

There is Luxse which offers a luxury lifestyle on-line guide and has a Twitter presence. Tweeting about new luxury products hitting the market that they've been featuring, but there didn't seem to be much of a conversation going on.

Luxury Suites International offers access to numerous luxury accommodations across North America, tying in with a web presence.

I also found Luxe Branding which initially seems to be the answer to all of my investigations, but at the moment is little more than a minimally used Twitter account to promote the release of a new book, which I haven't read.

Lux Guide is a male focussed luxury guide on Twitter, with seemingly no other presence on-line. This stream just seems to feed links to items that would be of interest to men of a high net worth.

I noticed a lot of the links were passing to Amazon so I am assuming the feed is simply using an affiliate account to generate revenue from the likes of Amazon.


I still feel the digital industry is crying out for a good implementation of a luxury brand web presence. Offering their exclusive customer base a portal or interface to access a level of customer service on-line that isn't available to mere mortals.

I think both the Veuve Clicquot and the Burberry work were heading in the right direction and hats off to both of them. I was particularly pleased with Veuve's use of Twitter, it would be great if they could back it up with perhaps a Flickr or Vimeo account.

I'd love to hear of any examples people have encountered on this subject; but judging from the number of searches hits that I receive on Digital Signals for luxury brands I guess everyone else is asking the same question.


Related reading:

American Express Open Forum - Compete http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/12/american-express-open-forum-twitter/

5 ways luxury brands can overcome the conundrum of social marketing - Web Strategist http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/09/03/five-ways-luxury-brands-can-overcome-the-conundrum-of-social-marketing/

Middlesbrough player launches Platinum Players - The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/aug/10/middlesbrough-player-launches-website

Tweet Cloud for Luxury Brands – Using Twitter for Exposure - TwiTip http://www.twitip.com/tweet-cloud-for-luxury-brands-using-twitter-for-exposure/


Further reading:

Social media and luxury brands - Perfect engagement platform? - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/03/social-media-and-luxury-brands-perfect.html

Is Apple a luxury brand? - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2008/12/is-apple-luxury-brand.html

Online Luxury Embrace Me . . . - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2008/10/luxury-brands-and-their-online-presence.html

Why bother with social media? - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/06/why-bother-with-social-media.html

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