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This is one of the chapters comprising the Vogue Business Index: Winter 2023/4 edition and should be read in conjunction with the others. Please use the table of contents below to navigate between the chapters of the Vogue Business Index: Winter 2023/4 edition.
Key takeaways:
- Give new directors time: The luxury downturn is making it difficult to assess the impact of new leadership at some fashion houses, and while refreshed creative direction often breeds digital hype, brands should not take the decision lightly. Instead, strategies require focus on the long term, with appointments supported by a clear vision.
- Look for emerging celebrities everywhere: Fashion houses need to be fast to court new ambassadors, given the number of luxury names looking to work their way up the ranks. Celebrities can come from anywhere: keeping an eye on planned TV launches and social media trends can wind up in cost-effective ambassador deals with newcomers, as opposed to partnerships between those with pre-established fandoms.
- Platform-native content rules: Luxury brands should look to Coach when considering bold moves. The US brand has reset its reputation with a full commitment to Gen Z-focused marketing. While celebrity content performs well on all platforms, taking risks such as eschewing the luxury aesthetic can pay off — much like at Coach.
Creative director merry-go-round
Dior is once again the most powerful digital player in the Vogue Business Index for the sixth time running. The brand is continuing to grow in success across almost all platforms (bar Facebook and Vogue Runway).
The brand’s refined celebrity strategy, as well as its carefully tailored platform marketing is all underlined by enthusiasm for the well-loved collections of Maria Grazia Chiuri. The Italian designer will mark her eighth year at the brand in 2024, making her a veteran within the roster of luxury creative heads.
Many of the leading luxury brands in general, particularly those growing in momentum, are among the ones with long-lasting creative directors. Balenciaga opted to avoid a change in leadership last year following the aftermath of a controversial ad campaign. Despite this torrid time, the Demna-led label has risen five places in the digital pillar and now sits sixth in the rankings.
Ralph Lauren, whose tenure has surpassed decades, has seen the eponymous brand rise four places to eighth in the digital pillar off the back of its luxury-focused pivot. Meanwhile, Prada defends its fourth position through a refresh led by the label’s Raf Simons hire in 2020 as well as support from Miuccia Prada as co-creative head — a bid to protect its heritage appeal.
This is not to say new creative directors do not bring hype. Gucci was the best-performing brand on Vogue Runway over the tracked six-month period, with the likely catalyst being curiosity around Sabato De Sarno’s debut show. Pharrell Williams’s first show as menswear head at Louis Vuitton became the most-viewed video by a luxury brand on YouTube (16.5 million views) that was not a perfume advert. Daniel Lee’s second Burberry show attracted 12.5 million views.
Even more impressive, perhaps, is Lee’s successor at Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy, who did not have a superstar profile before joining the Italian leather specialist in 2021 but delivered the fourth most-viewed fashion show (10 million) on YouTube during the period tracked.
Meanwhile, there are new creative directors at Alexander McQueen, Chloé, Tod’s and Moschino, in addition to some of the names mentioned above.
These changes are sometimes out of the hands of fashion brands, especially in instances where the call of creative duty puts immense pressure on creative directors, exacerbating mental and physical health issues. There is little doubt, though, that new creative leadership often brings about a reset and creates a hype machine around the brand.
It is clear, by contrast, that the changes at brands like Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Burberry have been accompanied by long-term strategic thinking about the direction of the brand — and the huge levels of attention they are drawing are testament to that. Outside of the Index, we see this trend bleed into other executive roles, with brands like Mugler also passing the leadership baton onto younger talent, having promoted Adrian Corsin to Mugler managing director in May 2023.
These are difficult times to assess change. The downturn in luxury sales will make it hard for any new creative director to stand out and tempt some to believe the change was misguided; judgements that are often unfair.
Digital hype remains difficult to translate into sales booms at any brand, as financial results show. Brands would be wise to give directors a chance to settle in and develop the kind of reputation that Chiuri, Gvasalia and Nicolas Ghesquière have developed over their near-decades at the helm.
Age is just a number
If the six months tracked by the digital pillar have proven anything, it is that (some) older males generate enormous online attraction. A Lionel Messi (36 years old) campaign in April for Louis Vuitton drove 3.5 million likes and comments, while a Dior post about Johnny Depp (60 years old) and the outfits he wore at Cannes received 2.6 million.
TikTok may skew towards Gen Z, but the most-viewed video on the platform during the tracked period was a Gucci campaign featuring Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae (50 years old) that has now been viewed 146 million times; brands are often tapping up the stars of potential streaming megahits like Squid Game early on, signing some actors up before the shows have even aired. Few men over the age of 35 would be able to attract the same level of attention as these international celebrities.
Still, younger men have also been featured heavily. Many of the best performing K-pop ambassadors in driving brand engagement were male-identifying, including Felix and J-Hope for Louis Vuitton, Ferragamo’s first global male ambassador Jeno Lee, Tayong at Loewe and Kenzo’s first global ambassador Vernon.
Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny confirmed his relationship with Kendall Jenner via a Gucci campaign that performed well across all channels, and Dior has shown its amazing eye for celebrity partnerships by recruiting Thai stars Nattawin Wattanagitiphat and Mile Phakphum Romsaithong as ambassadors last June. This demonstrates the power of cultural insight and awareness when assessing what works as cultural currency in different markets. In this way, Dior has avoided the trap of assuming Western celebrities have the same appeal worldwide.
Menswear is a growing concern for many brands. High-end consumers who identify as male in the US spent an average of $5,060 on luxury fashion over the past 12 months, considerably higher than the $4,650 spent by female-identifying fashion fans.
Gucci has earmarked menswear as a key growth area, while department stores like Browns have seen their female-to-male spending split narrow considerably in recent years. Valentino staged its first menswear-only show in three years last July. Multi-brand retailer Mytheresa opened an expanded menswear store in Münich in June. Louis Vuitton’s Hong Kong spectacle for Williams’s second show also further demonstrates its commitment to the category.
On top of this, the huge stars that brands are recruiting of all genders demonstrate the bigger-is-better approach that labels are now taking to celebrity ambassadorships. Consumer reliance on celebrities as a discovery channel rose 3 percentage points in the past three months, meanwhile, celebrities drove 57 per cent of the total visibility (earned media value) of leading fashion brands in 2023, a rise from 41 per cent over the same period in 2022.
The common approach taken by many brands at fashion shows includes rolling out the red carpet and inviting celebrity guests as if it were an awards ceremony. Interviews with these famed invitees wearing the brand’s collections provide plenty of content for social media channels — a time-honoured technique that still delivers strong traction. Gucci even recruited ‘Chicken Shop Date’ YouTube star Amelia Dimoldenberg to interview A-listers in 2023, a job she did to viral acclaim at the Golden Globes earlier that year.
TikTok stars and lo-fi videos
This celebrity approach is carrying over to TikTok where Gen Z users dominate. The Jung-jae video (146.1 million views) and the Bad Bunny-Jenner campaign (61.4 million views) both featured in the top 10 most-viewed videos on TikTok. Juliette Armanet singing for Dior (60.9 million views) and Scarlett Johansson’s Prada campaign (76 million views) were the other star-centric ploys to garner much attention.
Ultimately, brands do not need to reinvent the wheel. If the celebrity marketing strategy is right, then exciting and attractive short-form video content can easily follow.
That being said, fashion houses that opt for a more platform-native approach, using already-established TikTok stars and formats, can also outperform here. Hugo Boss and its TikTok-targeted work with Sabrina Bahsoon, aka Tube Girl, shows how effective a brand-celeb tie-up like this can be.
Bahsoon’s viral journey began in August with a TikTok video of her dancing on London’s underground system. By September, she was featured at Hugo Boss’s runway show, posting one of her now well-known selfie-style dancing videos via the brand’s TikTok account, gathering 56.8 million views.
Hugo Boss’s platform awareness was even more evident when posting a zoomed-out video of Bahsoon in response to a sceptical commenter who suggested the star was filming the initial video alone — it received nearly three times as many views as the original (145.4 million).
Lo-fi interviews (content that’s raw and imperfect) with celebrities or influencers filmed on phones or grainy footage of them talking through their getting-ready prep before big events are more common than ever on brand TikTok accounts. Prada finds a lot of success with vignettes (compilations or snippets in repeatable video form), such as getting models to high-five or spliced-together footage of dresses shot from various angles. Coach received nearly 50 million views for a 19-second interview with singer and actress Dove Cameron discussing her relationship with the maison.
Pleasingly, this guerilla-style footage can align nicely with wider brand objectives. Bag content performs particularly well on TikTok, which is useful for brands such as Burberry and Tom Ford that wish to drive growth through a greater focus on high-performing leather goods and accessories categories.
Coach features again here with its cute and engaging “What fits in a Tabby bag” vignettes, alongside Miu Miu’s simply-made Arcadie bag campaign featuring a drawled voice-over and effortless camera shots, garnering 43.9 million views. Several Prada Galleria bag videos have been viewed over 70 million times.
In summary, a focus on showcasing materials, craftsmanship, celebrities and creative formats can make brands winners on TikTok.
Case study: Coach and Coachtopia
Coach is a brand with buzz, rising up 11 places in the digital rankings since Summer to sit comfortably within the top 10 fashion houses in the digital pillar. Its massive YouTube growth heightened Google search interest, and improved performance on Chinese platforms Weibo and Bytedance have each made this achievable.
The brand’s TikTok strategy is a masterful execution of platform-native marketing revolving around fashion hacks and videos that look as though they could’ve been posted by any other user. Subjects of these videos reveal the items they can fit in their Tabby bags or explain the functionality of a brand’s design (For example: “Our hips don’t lie, a 2-in-1 belt is a great investment”).
As well as its clever focus on Gen Z in digital marketing campaigns, Coach has followed the well-travelled luxury playbook of reducing wholesale exposure and expanding its direct-to-consumer offering. Laid on a foundation of enhanced data analytics, it takes a more focused approach to inventory management and is incredibly useful during the current luxury downturn.
On YouTube, the brand gained much momentum with its Coachtopia campaign video promoting a product range crafted from leftover materials. Not only does this burnish its sustainability credentials, Coachtopia is also a vehicle for original marketing campaigns, such as releasing bags designed by fashion students.
Coach is relatively underexposed internationally compared to its peers. It operates in only 21 countries, with soon-to-be-stablemate Michael Kors active in 63 countries. A lot of growth is still possible for the US luxury brand, despite its maturity as a business in its home market.
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