Louis Vuitton POEm Strategy
Louis Vuitton’s (LV) primary strategy is the use of its heritage in stories, fashion movies, and others. The brand is enhancing its presence via the most popular social media channels. The content used by LV appeals to the consumer’s lifestyle aspirations. The digital media strategy of the brand covers its memorable monogram, distinguished history of cooperation with the fashion industry, sports, and lifestyle along with French heritage.
The brand’s campaigns regularly engage celebrities and upload specific video content. Despite all the technical issues and shortcomings of LV’s social media strategy, its content still has high quality, and its classy approach additionally contributes to the brand’s success. In its online social media strategy, LV, like any other luxury brand, faces the challenge of increasing the loyalty and engagement of its audience and simultaneously maintaining its brand positioning and exclusivity (Giglioli, 2017).
LV’s digital marketing strategy is strategically inclined and defined. It can be further explored utilizing the POEm model which includes paid, owned, and earned media. In terms of paid media, LV prefers to encompass exclusive visuals and high-fashion celebrities aiming to captivate the viewers “including Keith.
Richards, Madonna, Jennifer
Lopez, Sean Connery, Hayden Christensen, and Angelina Jolie, and more recently, David Bowie” and many more (Kasztalska, 2018). The brand connects emotionally with potential customers and makes them believe they are part of LV’s exclusive culture by casting influential models in its fashion films. For instance, it cost LV about six million dollars to engage Angelina Jolie as the face of its single ad campaign in 2018. In addition, the brand actively uses Instagram and Facebook Ads to target its customers effectively. Moreover, to interact with its market more efficiently and closely, LV is sponsoring some mega sports events and primarily focuses on macro-influencers like C. Ferragni.
The brand also uses owned media to the fullest. LV’s regular newsletters are sent at least once in 7-10 days, while its festive and campaign newsletters are sent daily. The newsletters are very visual due to the moving illustrations and captivating graphics. They are also very easy to navigate and free of heavy words. The brand has also designed a smartphone app “The Louis Vuitton Pass”. If the user scans the campaign image featuring the app’s icon both in stores and magazines, he or she will be provided with the dedicated space, videos, showcasing product data, images, and so on. Moreover, the app helps customers to locate stores and heads them to e-Commerce platform. Finally, LV’s website is well-designed and has location-based subdomains and global outreach.
Earned media is the most trusted one, as it is not controlled by the brand and is entirely disconnected from it. Therefore, it is crucial for the brand to be mentioned in a positive way (Giglioli, 2017). LV tries to control the situation with possible negative feedback in a preventive form making the customers have no possibility to engage with its Facebook, for example. LV’s collaboration with other brands has a reach history, and its advantage is that these collaborations appeal to a much wider audience and have parallel aligned values, falling out of “luxury fashion only.”
The Geographic Coverage Used by LV
Geographically, there are over 400 official LV stores selling the brand in nearly fifty countries around the globe with its international logistic chain (Kasztalska, 2018). Physically, one can buy original goods only in those official stores – no third parties are ever engaged. The age of the internet has practically ended physical geography. The internet creates its geography through networks and processing information flows from places. However, exploring LV’s website, it is evident that hyperlinking is under strict control, and it is a strategic practice. For example, some of hypertexts do not offer an unlimited movement across the internet. LV prefers to link back to itself principally. Hence, the opportunities to leave the website are pretty limited, excluding perhaps linking to LV’s social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (Armitage and Roberts, 2016).
When luxury brands are coming online, their main concern is losing an exclusivity (Athwal, Istanbulluoglu and McCormack, 2019). Nevertheless, LV digital marketing strategy turns out to be very successful. It can increase customer engagement and experience if little improvement changes are applied. One of the remarkable points of the brand’s strategy is the non-retail of their leather and fashion products online on third-party websites. However, if the brand’s marketing managers decided to sell a limited range of its products this way, this decision would be able to increase LV’s outreach to its customers.
A Timeline for LV Campaigns: Suggested Improvements in Social Media
Although LV’s social media presence is quite strong, the content’s consistency between all platforms is not always up to standard. For instance, if one surveys several Twitter handles, they do not always look well-coordinated. Nevertheless, the brand proceeds staying the frontrunner in the luxury field due to its audience’s insight scores. In turn, social media strategy should also be improved to increase the audience’s engagement. It should become more interactive and interacted with the audience’s comments like there in Instagram profiles. Speaking about Instagram separately, the Insta Story template should also be used to the fool. The hashtags used by the brand are very simple and, therefore, they reinforce the cohesion. Each post in social media is tagged as #LouisVuitton. Moreover, the customers can track brand updates due to its event-specific hashtags.
Some additional platforms alike “LV Service” Twitter handle might help create a personalized concierge approach and, therefore, increase exclusivity. The timeline in each source should be updated not less than once a day to support and promote the latest collection launched in January 2020 and its new accessories campaign with Emma Stone, Alicia Vikander, and Léa Seydoux. The frequency of timeline updates should be well-coordinated and simultaneously applied to all the platforms used by the brand. LV should streamline and structure by frequency its policy of the presence of its products in popular movies (as a hidden subconscious ad), at various worldwide festivals, in commercials, and other resources.
Although the brand states that there is an active chatbot on its website, in practice, there is none. This is one more issue to be handled in terms of marketing strategy improvement. The in-stores implication of such digital strategy elements as virtual reality and gamification can also play to increase brand ratings. Taking into account the continually appearing updated photo and video content, encouraging consumer feedback is essential but is absent at the moment.
Positive and Negative Reputation Management
The lack of dialogue between the consumers and the brand looks strange amid the fact that LV’s number of comments, shares, and likes is one of the most on social media. Hence, one of the essential tasks as of now is establishing reciprocal communication utilizing social media and chatbots. LV might implement the simplest but working elements of marketing strategy like creating some contests, and conducting customer surveys using short but informative questionnaires. These steps can reinforce LV as a brand and make consumers feel significant and develop their loyalty by way of purchases and repurchases.
Despite its successful marketing strategy, LV is still evaluated as not ethical enough by its consumers. For instance, although the brand is a member of the Better Cotton Initiative, there is no apparent emission-reducing target covering any of the brand’s supply chain, reducing potent chemicals, and minimizing textile waste. Besides, the brand prefers to disclose neither the addresses nor the names of its suppliers. Moreover, LV is often blamed in using fur, hair, leather, skin of exotic animals, and so on. Many consumers believe that it is their full right to be aware of who made their goods and the way their choice impacts the animals and planet. Yet, all these negative moments are blocked by the highest quality of the brand’s products.
Reference List
- Athwal, N., Istanbulluoglu, D. and McCormack, S. E. (2019) The allure of luxury brands’ social media activities: a uses and gratifications perspective, Emerald Insight. Web.
- Armitage, J., and Roberts, J., eds. (2016) Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media. Edinburgh University Press.
- Giglioli, S. (2017) The Impact of Social Media on Luxury Fashion Brands. Web.
- Kasztalska, A. M. (2018) Louis Vuitton as an example of the old and modern in the same time luxury brand in the eyes of its clientele, CBU International Conference On Innovations In Science And Education, doi: dx.doi.org/10.12955/cbup.v6.1161.