Seems like the luxury Brand debate is coming to an end. Luxury Brands often do have a problem with the transparency and accessibility of the web. Because they do have a reputation to protect. And they need to stay exclusive.
However this does not mean luxury Brands can ignore the the fast evolving changes in digital branding. Research shows that the luxury consumer is ready for 2.0 and they do have very high expectations.
Not meeting this expectations will definitely harm your brand. For a luxury brand, just ‘keeping up’ is not enough. You have to be outstanding.
Beth Uyenco, Research Director for Microsoft Advertising comes with the following Luxury Brand Engagement Model:
‘Awareness’ To stay in line with the offline communications, and to deepen the brand experience with interaction, your web presence needs to be of top quality.
‘Admiration’ Luxury Brands need to exceed expectations and do also have to communicate on an emotional level.
‘Exploration’ Similar to the in-store communications. Luxury customers will want a personalizes way of exploring the Brand and its products.
‘Consideration’ After the exploration phase, it is important to create engagement. In this stage it is very important to know who your future customer is, to deliver an exceptional service and to invite the customer to join the Brand.
‘Purchase’ Integration of offline and online will give the possibility to enrich the purchase experience. It is about helping to buy more efficient and/or making the purchase a remarkable moment.
‘Ownership’ There are many digital ways to keep and strengthen the relations with your exclusive customers.
When you look at the structure of digital companies you often see something like a ‘labs’. Nice thing about these labs is that you create a platform for innovation and that you share this process with the outside world. If done properly it is a great tool in product development and it also has growing involvement as a side effect.
A good ‘lab’ is more than just asking people to send in ideas. It is about sharing information and asking for feedback from experts or consumers.
10 examples of labs:
TBWA has a Media Arts Lab, you can find it on TheBigWhatAdventure.com. Besides that the website is a sleep (last update from 24 January 2007) I do not really consider this a Lab. It seems more a ’send in an idea’-thing like openad.net. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with product/advertising innovation. Sharing the process of innovation in advertising could give TBWA (or any other traditional agency) some valuable feedback and involvement from digital experts.
The famous Google labs now has a sister called Google creative lab. It is all about Google trying to serve the Branding market. And, as you can read, it is looking for collaboration with advertising agencies. Interesting project, curious when we get more insights.
Advertising Lab. More like a blog about The future of advertising. But the blogger is working for an ad agency which gives it a lab function.
American express is doing nice things within their Labs. They are even transparent in their discontinued experiments.
Nokia Trends Lab. Typically a consumer lab. Inspiring project. Urges creative thinkers to use mobile technology.
BBC Innovation labs. Series of creative workshops for interdisciplinary teams of professional creative technologists, application designers, software developers and interactive media designers, working across both Future Media & Vision platforms.
Everybody can make a widget today. We can, so we do. There are too many widgets, useless widgets.
The web and all the social networks are full of widgets. Only in facebook there are over 23.000. Most of them ‘just for fun’. When you are a company thinking of spreading one. Think about it. Do I just want a widget or do I have something to share.
To make a point I have created obvious useless widgets. You find them here (and here). If you agree with me. Share them, make your own, post about it etc. Be creative, take a stand.
In these days it is difficult to protect your brand against bad publicity. Everybody can say anything on any platform. It is impossible to dictate communications around your brand. Brands with the illusion of control are way behind. As explained on many other blogs bad news is spreading fast on the Internet. Much faster than good news. Here is a nice example of how to prevent this:
This Wednesday I was complaining about netvibes on twitter because netvibes seemed down for more than a day and I just had directed some prospects to my public page. Normally when I have something to say about a company I do notice them adding @company in my tweets. Never did I get any respond. It seems like most companies are using twitter for pushing in stead of interacting.
But with netvibes I did not. What they did is they noticed me complaining (using Twitter track I suppose) and asked me to get in contact. In10 minutes the problem was solved.
Think about what this did with my brand perception. And the perception of others following my tweets…
On ideasonideas.com Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts answers some questions following an interview in BusinessWeek last December. On youtube I find an interview with him from a few weeks ago.
It is interesting to see how a agency like Saatchi is struggling to keep up in the digital age. With Kevin Roberts it is all about Lovemarks. So now with all the new possibilities it is just about digital Lovemarks, isn’t it?
What I miss in the interviews is some good examples of digital Lovemarks. On ideasonideas.com Roberts comes with a few examples as the bestinjest campaign. But what I miss is the real emotional connection where the lovemarks stand for.
In my opinion it is even easier now a days to really move people because of the smooth distribution. I always put it like this: One thing never changes.. Human
with all the social networks > we can still feel lonely
Brands are increasingly recognizing that customer experience is everything. With the transparency of the web, news travels fast. Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Micropersuasion.com is even talking about a digital job function: Chief Customer Experience Officer
They also did set up an easy example with a google ’search within results’. Just enter any company and check the results.
Most of us still have the presumption that with online marketing you only reach youth. The European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) now published a report about Digital Families. It is interesting to see that Digital parents engage in a wider range of digital activities than those that live without children.
The research also shows that the websites visited by digital parents and their online activities vary according to the age of the children. If you are planning on targeting this online audience this information is really useful:
People living with very young children (between nought and four) are increasingly visiting health and film websites (+24% since 2006) while those living with children between five and nine are going to games sites (+32%). Price comparison sites are seeing a boost amongst those living with children between ten and fifteen (+31%) while those with older children (between 16 and 18) are enjoying more TV sites (+77%). Users living with older children also seem to be more technically advanced – almost half (47%) of those living with children aged 16-18 use instant messaging services compared to 37% of people living with children aged nought to four. A similar trend is seen when comparing film, TV or video clip downloads (30% vs. 22%) and music downloads (36% vs. 32%).
