The Covid-19 crisis feels like a watershed moment for both luxury and media. The world that emerges from the pandemic will require both to rethink their role in audiences’ lives.
The crisis has had a multi-dimensional impact on media consumption. On the one hand, we’ve seen audiences attaching more value than ever to trusted, premium brands – and tangible expertise. During the early months of the pandemic, our analysis of the most shared posts on LinkedIn in Europe picked up a big increase in the amount of content that audiences shared.
And that content was far more likely to come from established experts writing for trusted media brands. People weren’t just sharing content they liked – they attached greater value than ever to where it came from. At the same time as reiterating the importance of trust, the crisis has introduced a new expectation of proximity.
The pivot to digital has transformed the accessibility of media experiences that we once considered exclusive and dependent on ‘being there’.
Major blockbuster films are streamed directly to homes rather than shown exclusively in cinemas.
Top musicians perform for you over the internet, from the intimate surroundings of their front rooms.
Luxury: where exclusivity and proximity meet
Nobody is more aware of this than luxury marketers. Catwalk shows were once restricted to a few short rows of industry influencers top fashion journalists and carefully chosen celebrities. Increasingly, they are live-streamed to audiences of a million or more on trusted platforms like LinkedIn Live, reaching a far more complete luxury audience.
People are attaching greater importance to brands that they trust and respect – but they’ve also learned that they can feel closer to these people and brands than ever before. They’ve been reminded that many of the barriers erected
between them to create exclusivity don’t have to be there. This has big implications for luxury brands and the role that media choices play for them.
It’s all part of deeper trends that have been given even greater momentum by the events of this year. Together, millennials and Gen Z will represent 55% of the global luxury market by 2025. Bain & Company has predicted that luxury brands will need to adapt their strategies for this generation through digital shopping experiences, heightened social and environmental consciousness, and the ability to appeal to a post-aspirational mindset.
Ethics – not just aesthetics
Luxury brands are learning that they can’t hide behind exclusivity. Beautiful photography in glossy magazines and brand codes that only the educated few understand are no longer enough in themselves.
They need to be married to platforms that can tell a wider and deeper story. They have to enable a new generation of luxury buyers to get closer and decide on their own terms which brands they align themselves with.
They expect to own, wear, drive and experience brands that represent support for communities and respect and value for employees. We’ll need to express luxury brand values in a way that talks to ethics as much as to aesthetics.
Brands have responded – both before and during the pandemic. Gucci owes its existence as a brand and a business to its founder’s vision of scaling the skills and expertise of Florence’s artisan craftsmen to reach a wider audience – and
doing so using high-quality natural materials. That links the label intrinsically to the people working for it and the environment that it exists in.
Today that takes the form of Gucci’s Equilibrium Manifesto, formalising the need for balance between these different telements: gender equality, diversity, empowerment of employees and environmental responsibility. In the brand’s own words, it’s an online platform that connects the planet, purpose and people. It’s not just a message – it’s a community.
And the impact of this purposeful positioning? It’s coincided with sales growth of 36.9% in 2018, with 62% of all the brand’s sales coming from millennials.
It’s no coincidence that during 2020, luxury brands were some of the most responsive and most prominent in switching their expertise and their manufacturing capacity to supporting healthcare systems and communities. Think LVMH producing hand sanitiser – and Louis Vuitton manufacturing gowns and masks. These businesses were already aware of the role that demonstrable brand purpose in their stories.
Luxury brands are investing in sharing deeper, more holistic and more transparent narratives with their audiences. They are doing so not just through paid media but also through building communities and sharing content organically on trusted social platforms like LinkedIn.
This is the role that media will increasingly play for luxury. It won’t just broadcast aspirational messages. It will bring brands closer to audiences in spaces where they can explore deeper brand narratives with open, curious minds. It will help luxury to provide the depth of meaning and sense of purpose that buyers now want to invest in.
“Use media choices to get closer to your audience, establishing a sense of community and authenticity that enables you to tell the deeper brand stories they’re looking for.”
Want to join The Collective, and contribute to the debate?
Email us at: The.Collective@lewissilkin.com