Reviewing the story of luxury brands in the Chinese market this year, “digitization” is one of the important actions.
According to chattering data, brand words accounted for 66% of the Top100 search terms in the first half of 2023, and the popularity of brands such as Chanel Chanel, Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton, Prada Prada, Cartier Cartier and BVLGARI Bulgari continued to rise. At the same time, consumers are buying luxury goods online more frequently, with GMV in the luxury industry rising 254 percent year-on-year in 2023.
It is not difficult to find that in the face of the severe challenge of the global luxury market slowdown, the luxury industry, which has always been cautious about online marketing, is now accelerating the pace of digital transformation in China. According to Deloitte, Bain and other consulting companies, the Chinese market will account for 35% to 40% of the global luxury market by 2030, making it the largest country in luxury consumption. On the other hand, new trends in the local market and the iteration of digital technology have also made more and more younger consumers no longer simply seek to own a certain product, but to explore a special experience and a special moment.
Image source: teraoasia.com
Different from the past luxury consumption decision-making links, online luxury consumers have gradually shown a diversified trend of population segmentation. At present, the digital ecology of tremolo has gathered 73% of Chinese luxury consumers. According to interest preferences, three types of portraits can be further divided into core groups, potential groups and interest groups. Among them, the core population of luxury goods exceeds 40 million. Most of them are exquisite white-collar workers, senior middle class, and prefer watches, high-end jewelry, etc. The potential population exceeds 70 million. Most of them are fashion lovers in high-tier cities and prefer popular bags and clothing. The number of interested people is even more than 0.15 billion. They are mainly generation Z and prefer shoes and accessories.
In the face of a new generation of young, high-intention groups, how should luxury brands guide consumption habits through digital layout, so as to do a good job of localization strategy to promote, in order to win the confidence of the Chinese market? VOGUE Business joint Douyin, focusing on the analysis of the digital progress and achievements of luxury brands this year, through the integration of data, analysis and insights, to extract this year will continue to lead the value of consumption in the luxury industry five annual new trends.
Industry prospect
# Create immersive experiences with multiple points
# Online to become the brand “second space”
With the improvement of digital consumption links, online content platforms have become an important part of the journey of luxury consumers.
The data shows that the multiple contacts, rich content and complete links in the digital pattern of the Chinese market are building a unique local luxury ecosystem. At present, 53% of Chinese luxury consumers have said that they have purchased online channels. Among them, short video and live broadcast have become important ways for luxury consumers to understand products and brands. 34% of consumers think that the product description of short video is more detailed, 28% think that the content of short video is more rich, and 36% think that live broadcast is more immersive experience.
From product details, brand culture, to consumer experience, the integrity and systematization of online content has gradually become an important trend for luxury brands to precipitate brand value and crowd assets.
High-profile “big show” content and VIP brand experience win the attention of luxury people.
“Most people hope, a few people have” is the concept of “luxury” in the traditional sense. Time has changed. In the digital age of flat information, for luxury brands, its meaning to consumers is not only “identity”, but also a broader “social identity” and “cultural value”. How to make more consumers understand brand culture in the digital world is one of the important actions of luxury brands today.
As the carrier of new product release every season and the most important brand event, luxury brands are trying to break through the physical distance and time limit, so that the global industry and consumers can witness this moment. According to the tremolo data, during the 2023 International Fashion Week, eight top luxury brands, including Fendi, Prada, Gucci, Dior, Saint Laurent, Loewe, Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton, were broadcasting the spring and summer fashion show on tremolo. In addition, the four major fashion weeks in Paris, Milan, New York and London have accumulated more than 6 billion in total.
Image source: lvmh.com
The popularity of “cloud fashion show” has also changed the value of a “brand show” in the traditional sense. It not only represents a VIP-style front-row show experience, but also becomes a potential opportunity for luxury brands to effectively reach and precipitate new users.
In April last year, Louis Vuitton created the function of adding powder to the live broadcast of the 2023 early autumn show for the first time when shaking the voice, allowing users to pay attention to the brand window popping up in the live broadcast of the show with one click, thus realizing effective powder addition and transformation of people interested in luxury goods. On the other hand, the brand also drew more interested people into the cloud show by delineating the core group of luxury goods. After its first start, a number of brands including Fendi, Prada, Gucci and Loewe all used the component in the live broadcast of the big show on the 24 spring/summer show, and the average live broadcast achieved a rise of more than 10,000.
After the live broadcast of the big show, the Saint Laurent brand also created the show materials for the second time, and continued to attract the attention of consumers through video information flow and graphic information flow, achieving a 78% fan growth rate.
In fact, for luxury brands, “fashion show” carries multiple functions from product display to cultural transmission. The runway is only a part of consumers’ understanding of the brand. How to display more yuan of show information online also determines the unique value of the brand to consumers.
**Designer dialogue, inject” soul “brand value * *
The creative director of a luxury brand is often the “soul” who establishes the brand style and conveys the brand value. Compared with the final presentation of the product, consumers are also concerned about the source of inspiration and series of creative ideas. Therefore, in addition to the “cloud fashion show”, luxury brands are also having a dialogue with young consumer groups about brand spirit and emotional value through more vivid and interesting brand assets such as designers.
During the promotion of Louis Vuitton’s early autumn men’s clothing show in 2024, the brand’s men’s clothing creative director Pharrell Williams “Fei Dong” announced to enter a number of domestic social media. It is worth noting that the 13 Grammy Award-winning music producer produced the Hong Kong Grand Show for the first time, and its related topics were once on the top of the entertainment list. At the same time, as the creator and leader of pop culture, he has also become a brand. A business card for efficient communication with young users.
Image source: Heavenraven.com
In addition, French luxury brand Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, Chinese supermodel and Comme Moi brand founder Lv Yan and other fashion celebrities have also entered the social media platform. Outside the show, luxury brands further enrich users’ multi-dimensional cognition of their brand creativity and culture through the “backstage perspective” complemented by designers.
Image source: chinadaily.com
**Details differentiation, story integrity, create unique crowd value * *
Luxury brands’ polishing of creativity and the craftsmanship behind their products are also reflected in their control of the fineness of online content.
In the cooperation between jewelry brands such as Bulgari, Cartier and Tiffany and Douyin, the two sides have creatively broken the traditional single-screen display of online content and delivered a complete luxury brand content experience to Chinese consumers with an innovative content style of “more than one screen. For example, in the brand winter activity# Cartier Temple Tour Project, three Cartier iconic series works are successively performed through three screens, which conveys the festival concept of luxury brands and at the same time shows the details of brand products in a glance.
Photo by VOGUE
# Localized content authoring
# Connect the cultural identity of Chinese consumers
With the formation of a new generation of Chinese consumers’ cultural self-confidence awareness, “localization” has become an important trend that luxury brands cannot be ignored in the Chinese market. In recent years, the localization strategy of luxury brands no longer stays at the simple misappropriation of Chinese elements, but rises to the deep co-creation at the cultural level, so as to establish closer ties with Chinese consumers. In the construction of digital content, the capture of local cultural signals is also the most important.
On the eve of the 22 Beijing Winter Olympics, Prada cooperated with DOUYIN CONTENT LAB for the first time to successfully capture the attention of Chinese consumers to female power in sports and cultural signals. The brand tailored the spring and summer 2022 series of clothing for four female athletes, Gong Lijiao, Li Zhixuan, Xiong Dunhan and Yang Shuyu. At the same time, Hong Huang, the authoritative editor-in-chief of “DOU to make films”, served as the creative guide to create videos and blockbusters with the theme of “# Beauty’s Own Power”. According to the data, the project was watched 48 million times in total, and the exposure of the whole network exceeded 0.1 billion, the trend of in-brand word search increased by more than 56% year-on-year.
For 23 years, Prada has been paying close attention to Chinese local female athletes. In July, Prada became the official partner of China’s national women’s football team. In November, Prada cooperated with DOUYIN CONTENT LAB again to invite Chinese women’s football players to continue the topic of “beauty has its own power” and interpret the personalized and diversified Chinese sports spirit and the beauty of female power with the theme of “spiritual inheritance” and “self-challenge. In less than 48 hours after the launch, it has been broadcast more than 0.13 billion times, and the topic “# women’s football look is beautiful and rustling” has rushed to the fourth place in the hot list.
Photo by Prada
Localized creative content in the harvest of traffic and attention at the same time, Prada advocated the “new definition, rethinking and ultimately rediscovering the beauty” brand concept, is also being accepted and recognized by Chinese consumers. According to Dou New Gravity -2023 White Paper on Luxury Industry, the first white paper on China’s luxury market released by Giant Engine and Deloitte China, practicality and emotional value are the key factors driving luxury consumption together.
In addition to cultural signals, stars have also become an important promoter of emotional resonance between luxury brands and local consumers. Star potential energy can not only drive the topic to break the circle, but also arouse Chinese consumers’ favorable impression of the brand, and precipitate into brand equity.
In May last year, Louis Vuitton and brand spokesperson Wang Jiaer cooperated online with “Star Creation Component” to help the brand to rapidly increase its popularity through star potential energy guidance and attention to brand accounts. During the International Fashion Week, Luo Yiwei announced the new global spokesperson, Yang Mi, on the eve of the first live show, at the tremolo official, that the search index of the whole network rose 11 times.
Data show that Dior has become the first luxury brand to open an official account with tremolo since 2018. Luxury brands such as Gucci, Prada, Armani, Fendi and Louis Vuitton, and high luxury beauty brands such as YSL, Dior and Estee Lauder have also entered one after another. At present, the number of luxury product brands entering the tremolo is continuously increasing, and more localized creative perspectives are incorporated into the daily published works.
Photo by: Dior
This also means that the real, interesting and cultural content output such as stars and local cultural signals in the platform ecology has also become a key factor for luxury brands to form effective communication with Chinese consumers.
# Frontier Technology
# Virtual experience breaks through the limitation of time and space
The value of a luxury brand lies in its leadership of the trend. With the emergence of new generation technologies such as AI, AR, and VR, a new generation of young Chinese consumers have shown strong interest in this, and luxury brands are also trying to redefine the way people experience the world through innovative technology.
Image source: Trembling
In 2023, Gucci will try to move the “Eden Garden” pavilion of the offline “Gucci” collection exhibition online. The brand cooperated with tremolo in AR sticker challenge competition, breaking through the limitation of space and having more possibilities of interaction with consumers. Earlier, when Louis Vuitton launched a joint limited series with artist Yayoi Kusama, the brand launched AR stickers and launched the “pumpkin head” challenge online, which broke the topic circle, with 0.15 billion times of popularity and a population growth of 137. Among them, the Z generation population grew rapidly, that’s 31%.
Photo by: Gucci
Chattering told VOGUE Business that this year, it will still create more interesting interactive content with luxury brands through its PICO tools, such as invitation letter interaction, item interaction, interactive game experience, space interaction, etc., to drive more cutting-edge creative trends through the exploration of new technologies.
# Enriching the digital content ecosystem
# Expand the deterministic growth space
There is no doubt that the current luxury brands have gradually developed more imagination in the digital content ecology.
According to the “Dou New Gravity -2023 Douyin Luxury Industry White Paper”, it is inferred that the diversified and rich creator ecology can effectively help luxury brands to do a good job of localization penetration, and its growth rate is still expanding. Among them, fashion, culture and art and high-end lifestyle talents are widely welcomed, providing more possibilities for the localization growth of luxury brands.
At this stage, Louis Vuitton has started cooperation with star map talents. Through the pyramid-type talent matrix, industry experts and fashion talents are linked in multiple dimensions. From panoramic unpacking, product detail display, OOTD, etc., various unpacking categories and wearing categories of grass to content, the diversification of brand content in the digital ecology and the richness of product words are enhanced, and more opportunities are created for the brand to win the support of consumers in the Chinese market.
Photo by louisvuitton.com
Different from Louis Vuitton’s “high-rise and high-rise” layout of digital ecology, high-end watch brand Longines chose to deepen product expression to achieve the brand’s broken circle in the digital ecology. Combined with the product characteristics on the “flying back chronograph”, starting from the key words of pioneer, adventure, challenge, flight, etc., the cooperation of extreme sports, fashion and life attitude has brought about a 317 growth of the total population for the brand.
Image source: Longines
Chattering also further told VOGUE Business that the key for luxury brands to build China’s digital ecological content is not only to continue the brand’s past control of high-quality content and the complete presentation of creative inspiration, but also to think about how to combine with new technologies and new ways of playing, so that the tonality of luxury goods and brand stories can be presented more completely.
Therefore, DOUYIN CONTENT LAB has also successively expanded the professional exploration of different scenes such as “DOU to shoot movies”, “DOU to ingenuity”, “DOU to watch exhibitions” and “DOU to watch shows” to help luxury brands innovate and plan high-quality columns and expand growth space. For example, in the unveiling ceremony of the 75th anniversary Bulgari Serpenti series “handed down from generation to generation” collection art exhibition, the brand finally received 1200W exposures in trembles and formed a hot search effect on multiple platforms through live broadcast technical support in cooperation with “DOU Watch Show.
Image source: luxuo.vn
With the development of digitalization, the online platform is not only the content position of luxury brands, but also gradually transformed into a comprehensive management position with the three functions of content, marketing and business. Its strategy and complexity are self-evident.
# Convenient access
# Build Chinese consumers’ luxury consumption mind
For luxury brands, the significance of China’s digital ecology has been upgraded from communication channels to business positions.
Thanks to the perfect e-commerce infrastructure, the construction of online shelves represented by search, window and mall is helping consumers develop immersive consumption habits. At the same time, luxury brands have gradually begun to build “cloud counters” online through self-broadcast operations, combining the precise insight of the target population and brand goods insight in the tremolo ecology, and further establishing the luxury consumption mind of Chinese consumers online through short-link consumption process design.
Such as the German designer brand HUGO BOSS and HUGO, which belong to the same brand group, but the two positioning of different consumer groups. HUGO is aimed at young fashion people aged 25-40; HUGO BOSS is aimed at business people aged 35-50. Therefore, from the beginning of entering the tremolo, we have achieved a high repurchase rate of 65% and a membership increase of 400 by building a double-account brand matrix and matching different groups of people to undertake in the brand studio.
Source: HUGO, BOSS
While opening up the online integrated consumption link, how to shorten the user consumption path and create a more high quality and tonality user service experience process online is also one of the key actions of luxury brands online.
The first is the improvement of the brand e-commerce infrastructure inside and outside the station. In 2023, Louis Vuitton has helped users to realize the whole process of silky experience from in-station touch, grass planting to official purchase through the tremolo applet. VIP ROOM, the home page of Gucci’s brand number, has also realized the jump of the external purchase link, helping the brand to realize the global acceptance of the purchase link.
It is worth noting that while shortening the consumption link, the display of brand details ICON has also become the key to optimizing the consumption experience of luxury brands. In order to better unify the brand service experience, Bulgari and tremolo have customized the “slide-up ICON”. Through the ICON element that highlights the tonality of the brand, consumers can jump to the off-site brand applet page to learn more product information and enter the brand’s purchase channel by simply sliding up and interacting. According to the data, the new form helps the brand to increase the proportion of users to 90%, the favorable feeling of users is significantly increased, and the average daily search is increased by 38%.
Image source: Trembling
User search has also become one of the ways for luxury brands to achieve synergistic effects. Data show that 57% of users will have 30 seconds of search behavior after turning on the tremolo, and every thousand searches can bring 60 e-commerce transactions.
As a result, with the gradual improvement of the digital ecology of luxury brands, a combination of grass and purchase of “shopping-search-purchase-re-purchase” of the full-link consumer behavior trajectory, will also be gradually clear in the sound ecology.
From the five trends summarized by VOGUE Business, it can be found that the digital content ecology of luxury brands has also revealed a relatively clear picture through the creation of immersive content experience in trembles, localized content that resonates with Chinese consumers, short-link online consumption experience process, and the advantages of innovative technology tools and data tools.
At the same time, perhaps more importantly, luxury brands can also apply it to the world through the digital layout experience gained by deeply cultivating the Chinese market. At the moment, through the sound digital ecology, we are seeing a broad data pattern, luxury brands have a lot to do.
(Source: Vogue Business)
