Are luxury brands in the tank for product placement?

Careful product placement in movies, television and music videos can influence brand perception, build awareness and solidify an already-established reputation. Do luxury brands get it?

Having a celebrity wearing, mentioning or driving a luxury item in a blockbuster film or popular music video can put a luxury brand on the map. The association with an adored celebrity can also raise a brand’s prestige status.

“A product placement strategy attempts to remove the appearance of selling while still promoting the product,” said Dalia Strum, founder of Dalia Inc. and SocialFashion.com, New York. “By incorporating the product into a television show or movie based on the type of show and the type of viewer who watches it, the initial appeal is introduced to the consumer.

“This approach aids in the latest trend in advertising to make it less advertorial,” she said. “Our society has become numb to in-your-face ads, therefore product placement has become more prevalent in reaching consumers by inserting the product message inside the show they are watching.

“In doing so, advertisers can promote their products or services to a more clearly defined demographic with similar interests and a loyal following.”

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• Viewing on video
• Tapping TV
• Musical measure
• Potential pitfalls

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MF – Fashion

Why luxury brands should embrace mobile

via Mobile Commerce Daily

The rapid adoption of the smartphone and the mobile medium is one of the most important trends that shopper marketers are tracking this year and next.

Consumers are not only using their mobile phones to make purchases, but also increasing using them to perform shopping research on their way to a store and while they are in the store.

This trend will only increase with Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone activating 450,000 phones a day and as a generation of teenagers, who currently average 3,339 text messages a month, come of age.

Luxury shoppers are early adopters of powerful smartphones, but paradoxically, luxury brands are lagging behind when it comes to leveraging mobile marketing.

This is not unusual in and of itself.

Mind the gap
Luxury brands traditionally trail other retail brands when it comes to technology adoption and in providing cross-channel user experiences.

Unlike wide-appeal brands such as Gap or J.C. Penney, luxury brands’ core customers often have higher service expectations due to the higher price points of luxury goods, which luxury brand managers mistakenly assume exclusively means personal service from sales associates.

In reality luxury shoppers’ expectations for high-quality service extend to great self-service tools and rich multichannel shopping experiences.

In a recent New York Times interview, Christopher Bailey, chief designer at Burberry, explained that part of the continued success of the venerable luxury fashion brand is due to its new cross-channel initiatives, especially in the mobile medium.

In fact, during the fashion house’s runway shows, spectators are furnished with mobile devices that allow them to reserve items in real-time while they are viewing them on the runway.

However, Burberry – which ensures that its customers can interact and experience brand consistency across every possible channel – is the exception to the rule.

(See Burberry takes third place: Luxury Marketer of the Year)

Many luxury retailers continue to invest their resources in the same old tools.

For instance, luxury brands spend millions on store facades and interior fixtures, yet ignore the parking lots that surround the stores – leaving them aesthetically displeasing and visually at-odds with the brand experience inside the store.

There is a similar incongruity related to mobile.

While their in-store experience may be unparalleled, luxury brands often receive failing grades when it comes to pre-tailing, an increasingly important step in a consumer’s purchase decision.

Luxury brands need to move quickly to offer mobile and online pre-shopping tools that seamlessly integrate with their existing ecommerce and retail experiences.

These marketers must ask themselves: Do all channels have visibility into a customer’s past purchases, gifts and wish lists?

In many ways, mobile represents the latest incarnation of the venerable clientelling practices that luxury brands have leveraged for years.

Associate sales, not sales associate
Why is mobile so important for luxury brands? Brand perception, loyalty and retention, for starters.

Luxury brand customers feel they have a relationship – even a bond – with the brands themselves, which does not extend, interestingly enough, to the sales associates or other human faces of the brands.

Mobile, in particular, allows customers to limit their interaction directly to the brand via the use of technology and to keep their interaction and brand experience consistent with their own perception of the brand.

For example, users of Gucci’s iPhone application are treated to exclusive music mixes by celebrity DJ, Mark Ronson, as well as sneak peeks of forthcoming merchandise, such as the Gucci Kids line.

The brand is rewarding its customers for using the mobile medium, offering a more intimate interaction than might be had in a bricks-and-mortar store, while also removing the chance that a single sales associate’s bad day could translate into lasting damage to the brand via customer dissatisfaction.

Of course, one of the primary justifications for the mobile medium is the same for Walmart as for Neiman Marcus: simple convenience.

Consumers increasingly rely on mobile devices for everything from calendaring to weather forecasts to GPS, and this ubiquity extends to shopping.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research Inc., Web retailers could increase consumer engagement by 85 percent simply by offering a mobile version of their Web site (see story).

So, the time is now for luxury brands to add mobile to their channel mix.

While the benefits are numerous for all retailers, luxury brands, in particular, stand to gain higher engagement, sales and retention rates by offering a strong user experience to customers who clearly want – and expect – a direct, intimate and convenient way of interacting with the brands.

Jason Goldberg is vice president of strategy and customer experience at CrossView. Portland, OR. Reach him at jgoldberg@crossview.com.

via dailyorange.com

Luxury fashion brands push toward China

Fashion, whether in terms of the consumer or the industry itself, is all about chasing the trends. Most trends are only around for a few seasons or at least until the magazines and bloggers deem them “so last year.”

However, some trends stay because they’ve found a balance between consumer interest and brand interest. Just take a look at the evolution of leopard print, the color black and even social media. The best trends are not just the ones that stay but the ones that change fashion forever.

This is the case for fashion’s latest craze: China.

“China is forecast to become the world’s top buyer of luxury goods by 2015,” according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in an article published in The Independent on Sept. 15.

With Western countries still struggling in the recession, luxury brands are now looking toward the East for sales boosts and new brand identities. Designer labels, such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Cartier, are sprouting up retail stores all over China, specifically in its biggest cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

The recent emergence of China as a growing fashion empire is definitely seen as new, intimidating territory. Most brands are still behind on incorporating China into their five-year plans.

For one, China has always been known as a country heavily reliant on its export growth and cheap labor. Brands labeled as “Made in China” come with negative connotations and are often seen as fake imitations of the real thing. But with high-end brands moving in, the country is looking to build a more extravagant image for itself. Credibility is slowly being brought back into the hands of the Chinese.

Another concern brands have with China is of course the cultural gap between the East and the West.

“When it comes to attracting China’s new wealth, the challenge for some of the world’s most iconic luxury brands is figuring out how to appeal to a consumer base that is constantly evolving and is, in many ways, very different from traditional markets in the West,” wrote Bettina Wassener in an article published in The New York Times on Nov. 8.

Going back to the longevity of trends in fashion, it’s important for brands to find ways to appeal to consumers. Labels such as Hermes and Louis Vuitton have succeeded in the Chinese market because they have found a common interest: heritage.

“Brands with a long history, like Hermes, particularly appeal to the Chinese ‘self-made man,’ who has worked hard to obtain a higher rank and are educating themselves on the value of what they buy,” according to an article published in The New York Times on Nov. 9.

As a country with so much history, China prides itself on its heritage and is naturally drawn to brands that do the same. This is why old brands like Gucci and Chanel thrive in China and often find lines of wealthy Chinese people waiting to wipe the shelves clean.

After years of backwash, China is finally moving into the frontier of fashion. Luxury labels have been quick to see this trend, and it’s only a matter of time before it trickles down to high-end and low-end department stores. But building interest and awareness is easier said than done, and if a brand struggles to find its place in China, then it should be prepared to get trampled over.

All’s fair in the business of fashion, so either get with the program or wait for extinction.

SOURCE ARTICLE.

PIAZZA SEMPIONE: LUXURY DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

IN OCCASIONE DEL LANCIO DEL NUOVO WEBSITE UFFICIALE, PIAZZA SEMPIONE ORGANIZZA UN INCONTRO DEDICATO ALLA LUXURY DIGITAL EXPERIENCE.

Il lancio del nuovo sito piazzasempione.com, interamente trasformato e progettato in una dimensione unica e innovativa per il settore moda, diventa occasione di incontro e riflessione sul tema della rete e delle nuove frontiere della comunicazione digitale.

Attraverso il sito piazzasempione.com – esperienza visiva, narrativa ed emozionale che raccoglie intorno all’universo e ai valori del marchio una community partecipante e attiva, Piazza Sempione si affaccia nella moderna era digitale, di cui esplorerà avanguardie, dinamiche e modalità nel meeting dedicato alla Luxury Digital Experience, il prossimo mercoledì 27 Ottobre.

Un evento innovativo quanto i contenuti che si propone di analizzare. Un dialogo tra opinion leader, esperti e addetti ai lavori che, insieme a Mario Abis, Giuliano Noci e Sara Maino, moderati da Marina Garzoni, esamineranno i cambiamenti, gli strumenti e le nuove forme della comunicazione digitale sia dal punto di vista socio-culturale che in una prospettiva di sviluppo del brand e delle strategie d’impresa.
In particolare, saranno analizzati temi di grande attualità come il dilagante fenomeno dei fashion blogger, il potere dei social network e la nuova declinazione del lusso democratico e accessibile.

• Mario Abis è Professore di Ricerche Psico-Sociali IULM e Direttore Generale del MAKNO.
• Giuliano Noci è Ordinario di Marketing presso l’Istituto Politecnico di Milano e Associate Dean del MIP-School of Management.
• Sara Maino è Caporedattore Moda di Vogue Italia e responsabile dell’area Talents di vogue.it.
  
• Marina Garzoni è Fondatrice e CEO di Moda e Tecnologia/Style Star.

Per maggiori informazioni: Ufficio Stampa – stampa@piazzasempione.com – T.+ 39 02 89 400 400 – F.+39 02 89 400 411

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