Tagged with 'cartier'

The South By Southwest Interactive panel picker has done its duty and about 60 panels were announced last week, but one still caught my eye that did not get selected: Social Media for Luxury Brands and Brands With Issues. It looks like a very interesting discussion. One line from their abstract states what I would consider to be the crux of the issue of involvement in social media for luxury brands - “Some high-end brands fear getting their hands dirty by mixing with the masses.”

That’s no longer true for Cartier who overcame any supposed fear and got their hands dirty on MySpace last summer. I for one was surprised that Cartier has a MySpace presence. See and hear http://www.myspace.com/lovebycartier for the actual page and to view their 4048 friends.

The world’s most desirable luxury brands according to Forbes magazine include Gucci, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. These are the brands that respondents to the survey would buy if money were no object. If you haven’t seen the site Brand Tags yet, check out the tags for Louis Vuitton (here’s a hint: expensive luxury bags are the top three tags).

One of Cartier’s stated goals with a MySpace campaign was to market to a younger crowd, but Cartier is not just after the teenyboppers instant messaging with their friends about their latest crush. MySpace says that fully 85% of their U.S.-based users are over 18 so Cartier’s definition of young may be 20-somethings.

According to the Forbes article, though, United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong are the world leaders in luxury goods consumption. So perhaps there’s a mismatch in the MySpace “walled garden” eyeball/audience tendency and the most likely luxury brand consumer.

No matter the analysis of effectiveness of reaching their target, the reality is that all brands are seeking the viral nature and virtual word-of-mouth marketing that social media offers. What brands do you wish were more “hip” online for you to share with others? Which brands have you tuned out on your favorite social media sites?

I’ve been harping on the importance of fully integrating social media tactics with your company’s marketing strategy and business goals for awhile now. This week, I came across two examples that illustrate my point.

Apparently, Cartier is the first luxury brand to market itself on a mainstream social network – MySpace. My first reaction was: why MySpace?! It’s interesting that out of all the social networks to choose from, Cartier had to choose the one that had a reputation for being: creepy, sketchy, sleazy, and full of perverts, pedophiles, predators and porn. The article talks about how Cartier had to police the people who were friending the brand in order to “respect the brand’s objectives” (if you have pictures of yourself drinking beer at a party, sorry, you can’t be a friend of Cartier). Again, why MySpace?

Taking a step back – why market on a social network in the first place? How does that fit with Cartier’s business goals or branding strategy? It’s true that the current recession has hit luxury brands hard, with people cutting down on spending across the board. Even Louis Vuitton advertised on television for the first time. But is having an official presence on a social network to reach a younger audience worth the risk of diluting the brand? (Unofficial fan pages created by users are a different story for another post.)

At the other end of the spectrum, there is Threadless, a company that grew organically from an online community and is built on a social network. Users submit their T-shirt designs, vote for their favorites, and those favorites are produced and sold. Unlike most retailers, Threadless doesn’t have an inventory problem – and why should they? The T-shirts that are produced are the ones the community has already indicated a desire for. It is the pipedream of every retailer – to be able to know beforehand exactly what consumers want.

In the case of Threadless, the social network and community aspects are so fully integrated into the company that “the Threadless brand is not the shirts but the community experience,” writes Max Chafkin. Jeff Lieberman, quoted in Chafkin’s article, goes so far as to claim that “to say it’s just a T-shirt company is absurd. I look at it as a community company that happens to use T-shirts as a canvas.”

Not every company will be able to achieve the level of integration of social media that Threadless has. In fact, most probably won’t. The point is that social media tactics need to be part of something bigger – part of the business strategy and goals, and part of the company’s culture, from top to bottom.