Online marketing of luxury brands - still unsolved question?

When was the last time you have seen an online ad or any other online campaign for a real luxury brands? Luxury brands used to stay a way from any thing that looked like the web - for them; it was too common, too vulgar. However, in the last months we are starting to see the penetration of these brands to the online marketing world. There are 3 main drivers to this process:

1. More sophisticated tools and solutions

• Web technologies - AJAX, new versions of Flash and other innovations in web technologies make it possible to design and implement "luxury look and feel". Brands and companies feel more comfortable to use the medium as a direct sales channel (examples: www.louisvuitton.com, www.coach.com) although most of them will still use it as an online catalog (and by doing so are losing one of the most effective sales channels).
• Online media becoming richer and more sophisticated - the new technologies and mostly high-resolution video content enables to create a better branded, good looking content
• Social networks and communities - context is one of the most important factors in marketing. Viral online campaigns that use social networks to track and utilize relationship of a well segmented audience, is the perfect solution for luxury brands threatened by the huge amount of online spam.

2. Preferences of customers

• Age - The current potential customers were raised along side with the web and are managing many aspects of their life using the web. For this audience, the lack of a substantial online presence is hurting the brand.
• Demographics - by their very nature, luxury brands customers spend an increasing amount of time connected to the web and are looking to converge many of their activities into this media to save time and increase efficiency.

3. Economics

• Direct online selling and online marketing are a cost effective media/channel
• Global reach
• Online marketing (done properly) can enhance the brand and add a "cooler" "younger" "more current" aspect to the marketing effort

In the next few years, we are expected to see a lot of activity in this space. Brands with online presence will move into e-commerce and more advanced brands that already

use the direct sales channel will become sophisticated users of the most advanced online marketing methods.

(Benchmark: Luxury Sector eBusiness Adoption, Victoria Bracewell Lewis, Forrester report, June 2 2008)

As usual, the brave brands that were not afraid to try to capture this space early on will be better positioned to capitalize on the opportunities and enjoy the substantial growth in this space.