Luxury Brands and Communication

Paper media remain the preferred type of advertising for luxury brands. They are the best adapted to create quality ads that consumers can enjoy when they want and for as long as they want. The paper format allows an advertiser to tell a story, however, not all luxury brands bother to tell a story any more. Ofter a nice product, a logo, a Parisian street corner, and a famous actress looking into the camera must suffice. This is just advertising, and nothing more. Today, and certainly 10 years from now, what matters is not just the quality of the advertising content but the experiences that brands offer consumer. Today’s consumer searches above all for good service and a quality product. The world is changing and communicating about a luxury brand or product can no longer be restricted to traditional advertising, no matter how good the advertising is. By producing rich content and spreading it online, a brand ensures it can increase the time consumers spend with the brand and the likelihood the consumers will feel connected to the brand. The ingredients for their online and offline campaigns include beautiful pictures taken at international hot spots, top models or famous actresses and large productions. While paper ads are limited to an 8½ X 11 size, the Internet allows brands to go much further in terms of telling a story. Above all, the Internet allows some quantitative figures unfathomable for traditional advertising campaigns: time spent looking at the content, number of views, visitors, number of times forwarded, and number of times the embedded code was copied. The brand just needs to make sure that the information spreads. Often, luxury brands, out of fear of appearing too mainstream, only use PR and send e-mails to their data base. This limits the reach of their message. A larger spread could be created by involving influencers (bloggers or other opinion leaders) through a well-organized online campaign that integrates viral techniques. Here are some of this short films a.k.a. “long commercials” directed by celebrities such as Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, David Lynch and Guy Richie for Dior starring Marion Cotillard and Jude Law.