The luxury brands are increasingly adapting the internet and trying to drive growth by taking the digital route. It has led many analysts and experts to raise the question, ‘Is Digital Killing the Luxury Brand?’ Duke Greenhill who runs a creative marketing agency based in New York called Greenhill & Partners specializes in marketing luxury brands and engaging the emerging affluent. Greenhill is of the firm view that the question is not if digital media can be safely leveraged to the advantage of luxury brands but how to go about it.
Greenhill has put forward five cardinal rules that luxury brands must follow in order to take advantage of the digital media. Social media has tremendous democratizing power and it enables luxury brands to build a firm base amongst people who aspire for their brand but can’t afford it at the moment. The brands must democratize but never downgrade. The brands must engage with the aspirational set and innovate instead of downgrading to meet their demands. The brands are wrongly worried about the interactivity between the brand and the buyer diluting the brand.
Burberry has successfully created a photo sharing platform that enables it to reach a significant audience without loosening its control on the brand. The brands must make sure that the quality of their intervention in the digital media is top class. You can’t afford to dilute the quality just because it targeted at digital media. The other mistake luxury brands often do is to press their creations for traditional media on to the digital space. The interventions must be developed and produced specifically to suit the demands of the digital channels. And finally the luxury brands should not blindly follow a particular digital approach because one brand has done it successfully. Only those platforms that suit core brand ideal or customer need will succeed.
Via: mashable
