Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Managing Luxury Brand Online Content

Managing your  online brand  content can be as common sense as proofreading the grammar and punctuation on all your material to setting and managing the overall tone of the brand throughout all digital platforms.It is surprising how much material gets published without anyone reviewing and editing the content. It is even more surprising how many errors get published even though content was reviewed and edited!

Luxury brands in particular have to be extremely careful and prudent in not only what is written about their products but how it is written. Building and managing the overall tone of a luxury brand is extremely difficult. Typically content is reviewed many times before being published. The tone of the company has to match its message. The personality of the content writer should not come out in his / her writing but rather the personality of the company and brand should be a natural consequence. Luxury brands usually have a subdued tone. Typically, one would not find sarcasism, humor or aggression in luxury brand content. Also as for any content, grammar and punctuation should be precise and there should not be any errors in information given.

Now more than ever branded content is created with mobile devices in mind. What does this mean? It signifies that content should be to the point, not wordy, interesting and valuable. The average person has literally seconds to read and digest the material and decide if it is valuable enough to pass on to others or to utilize. Consumers don't want to be advertised to or pushed to purchase. Rather consumers and fans of brands do enjoy feeling a part of the "brand" family. Burberry for example invited fans on Facebook to ask questions directly to its Chief Creative Director, Christopher Bailey. Mr. Bailey then answered questions live via Facebook, addressing fans by their names. It was a huge success. Gucci, just recently did the exact same thing with its Creative Director, Ms.Frida Giannini.

Everyone and anyone who represents the company and who publishes content has to be onboard and strictly supporting the corporate tone and message. The social media strategy is no longer "owned" by the marketing department and therefore anyone in the company can adversely affect the luxury brand's social media strategy. Not only should there be training sessions to aid employees on how to use new social media tools, but those who represent the company online should publish content that is consistent with the overall corporate tone and message.

No comments: