Lucia Mancini is the Owner of Lucia Mancini- New Media Consulting Services, a social media consultancy firm that focuses on finding creative and effective ways to harness the power that digital platforms offer. In her blog, Lucia offers assistance and welcomes questions and comments from individuals who want to develop their social media strategies for their businesses.
Consumers are looking at what companies are doing with regard to social responsiblity. They are looking beyond donations and want to know how the companies are getting involved with the environment and society around them. This is especially prevalent with luxury consumers. A luxury brand's corporate social responsiblity makes a huge impact on the consumers choice to purchase its goods. What luxury brands are doing what in terms of CSR?
Luxury brand Louis Vuitton has a program with SOS Children's Villages called Parnership for Children's Futures. The partnership helps children who are orphaned, abandoned or whose families are unable to care for them. Worldwide, SOS Children's Villages cares for over 78,000 children and young people in 500 children's villages.
Bulgari works with Save The Children organization and has been raising millions to help children worldwide. Gucci partners with the United Nations Childrens Fund and has environmentally friendly packaging. Burberry has its own Burberry Foundation, which helps young people realize their creative dreams. Burberry also partners with 17 charity groups in Asia, America and in Europe. Giorgio Armani has supported the following charities: American Foundation for AIDS, Global Fun, UNICEF, and RED to name a few.
Now more than ever consumers are scrutinizing what their favorite luxury brands are doing for others. There is and there will be an increasing social pressure to become more charitable, generous and attentive to society and the environment. The pressure is on and rightly so.
Discussing Corporate Responsibility: Burberry President Angela Ahrendts and Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey at Annual Vendor Conference, London.
I write a lot about luxury brands mostly because I reside partially in Italy, am surrounded by fashion everyday, work with luxury brands and ... am a fan myself of some of the beautifully made, high quality items with the designer labels. I am only human.
I also have a passion for social media because I like people and I am always curious about consumer behavior and personalities. I have written about what some of the luxury brands are doing with social media and have even listed the top brands. However I am shocked that more steps have not been taken by even the giants. I see a lot of copying eachother. One brand (Burberry) does acoustics on their FB page and another luxury brand (Bulgari) does the BZero1 video. One brand is doing events on FB (Dolce & Gabbana) and almost instantaneously its competitor is doing events as well on FB. Where is the creativity? Where is the wanting to really outreach to its fans making them feel special and a part of their "family?" There seems to be a lot of fear especially with the luxury brands in doing something that won't be fitting to the image. Instead I believe the more human the brands look, the more they will gain a feeling of affinity with its fans. I am really surprised that luxury brands have not already done the following but maybe after reading this post they will ;) :
1) Build forums where inside staff answers questions.
2) Build blogs where brand designers actually give advice how to wear particular items, what styles look best on what body build, upcoming trends,etc.
3) Use blogs where the sourcing or manufacturers that the luxury brands use around the world show and discuss what goes into making an item. The general audience has no idea what fine handcrafted work goes into making a leather handbag or boots or sweater, etc.
4) Use same blogs as in n.2 above to get the manufacturers on board, make them feel part of the brand "family" as well.
5) Build social network where consumers not just upload their picture wearing the brand item but the consumer gives some more detailed info of where the consumer is going, his/her profession, etc. This is what personalizes it. I love Burberry's social networking site http://www.artofthetrench.com/ . I would however enhance it in the detail's section. On this site, fans are encouraged to upload their pictures wearing their Burberry trench coats and include their name and location. To personalize it more it would be better to have "Anna, a journalist in London, late for work."rather than just "Anna photographed in London."
6) Link everything to a "How do I get this look" idea to the brand's ecommerce site.
A female affluent consumer walks into a Saks' shoe department. She tries on several luxury brand shoes and then has to decide between two designer brands. The prices are the same. The look, heel, color are all the same. The shoe's comfort is the same. What is the deciding factor?
Another female affluent consumer is internet savvy and has no problem purchasing luxury items online. She is a keen follower or fan of two luxury brands. She is also an evangelist of both brands. She is in the market to buy luxury brand shoes and must decide between the two. The prices are the same. The look, heel, color are all the same. She has owned both brands before and is satisfied with the quality and comfort of both. What is the deciding factor?
How is social media and digital platforms affecting consumer behavior with luxury brands? There is a lot of information, research, studies on how these are changing the way consumers purchase. Does the female affluent consumer feel an affinity toward one luxury brand in particular because she is a "fan" of that brand? Does she purchase luxury brand X instead of Y because X has done a better job with its digital presence? Is she more apt to buy brand X because she saw today an image on X's facebook page of actress Angelina Jolie wearing X shoes? What exactly is the deciding factor that pushes the consumer to purchase X rather than Y and what then can luxury brands do to harness these changes in consumer behavior?
Below is the 2010 Luxury Lab Index which ranks the top luxury brands according to digital excellence:
Top Ten Luxury Brands with the highest digital IQ (as ranked by Luxury Lab):
1. Coach
2. Ralph Lauren
3. Louis Vuitton
4. Gucci
5. Hugo Boss
6. Burberry
7. Dolce & Gabbana
8. Giorgio Armani
9. Swarovski
10. Tiffany
According to L2 Founder Scott Galloway,
"... 2010 has been a seminal year for the luxury industry, some brands have put the weight of their organization behind digital, while others have stood still and have been left behind.” “The ‘it’ product in luxury is not a handbag or watch, but innovative social media programs.”
REPORT FINDINGS:
"Traffic to brand sites from Facebook more than doubled in 2010, growing from 3.4 percent to 7.1 percent with 73 percent of luxury brands registering the social media giant as a top eight source of traffic. Traffic from Twitter and YouTube decreased.
Brand sites with social sharing recorded annual traffic growth of 42 percent versus 18 percent for brands without social sharing suggesting the increasing importance of social media optimization.
Digital competence leads to more site traffic. The 21 brands that increased their Digital IQ demonstrated annual traffic growth of 52 percent versus traffic growth of just 8 percent for brands that registered IQ decreases.
The 39 brands that sell online boast a Digital IQ of 117 versus an average IQ of 79 for the 33 brands that are not e-commerce-enabled.
Only half of brands engage in email marketing, only two in five are purchasing search terms and only 10% have mobile sites. "
