Chanel's First Post on Insta #THEONETHATIWANT

Let’s talk luxury and social media. A few months ago, I had been looking at Chanel’s social media strategy as part of some work I was doing. I was looking at their Instagram account – and I kept searching for Chanel and refreshing my phone because I thought there was an error when I saw that they had not posted any photos. Not only had they not posted any photos, but they had over a million followers. This was no error.

This past week, I came across an article in Adweek titled “Chanel Got 1.8 Million Instagram Followers Virtually out of Nowhere”. I strongly disagree with this statement - Chanel didn’t get these followers out of nowhere, they got them because they have such a strong brand and marketing strategy. The article says that “After only one day of Instagram work, Chanel is already ahead of a good number of its high-end fashion competitors in terms of audience on the social channel” but then mentions that “…it appears that the brand opened its account some time ago, built up a considerable backing organically” so at least they realized this was not a result of just a few Instagram posts. I had observed their account months ago and saw that they had built a strong following before even posting.

Chanel’s first post was a video that features a snippet of an upcoming commercial, which gave followers a good teaser to get excited for the full Baz Luhrmann-directed video featuring Gisele Bündchen. The video garnered over 40,000 likes. Part of Chanel’s marketing strategy is exclusivity. The brand then posted numerous photos from a party held in New York, where attendees included the hottest socialites and models in the industry. These photos garnered nearly 158,000 likes in less than a day. Celebs including Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour, Baz Luhrmann, Gisele Bündchen, Lily Allen, Poppy Delevingne, Leigh Lezark, Lauren Santo Domingo and Harley Viera-Newton made it in these photos. Talk about a strong start! Here are some Instagram follower stats of Chanel’s competitors:

·         Dior: 1.78 followers

·         Valentino: 1.72 million followers

·         Versace: 1.3 million followers

·         Armani: 972,000 followers

·         Jean Paul Gautier: 165,000 followers

It will be interesting to follow Chanel’s social media strategy to see how it evolves and if the brand will keep up with the frequency of its posts.

If you’re interested, watch the full video here (just posted today! annnnnd it’s amazing): http://www.chanel.com/

Luxury Online Flagships Go For a Redesign

Luxury brands have traditionally been a bit slower to take up new technologies, therefore it is interesting to watch when and at what pace they play catch up. Recently some brands have rolled out more frequent website updates to drive traffic from both a search perspective, and visual and UX standpoint. Aston Martin chose to announce the redesign of their site via the brand’s social media outlets, instead of simply releasing the changes through an announcement on the site page itself, noting on Twitter both the “new and improved homepage design and navigation.” This was an interesting tactic for Aston Martin because it helps drive current brand enthusiasts to the new site, in effect to test out changes, tracking time spent on the site and identifying the most popular areas or content. Instead of having to navigate to a particular model, the different cars are the first menu options at the top bar, and slide across as full-screen images on the home page. As most users are likely looking for a particular car within the Aston Martin line, it was advantageous for the company to retool the site to align more closely with those search inquiries and page visits.

Marc Jacobs also recently revamped its online flagship, taking away some of the hierarchy to streamline the process of viewing and purchasing the product. The side menu is now organized in the same way in which customers would shop in-person, structured by gender, rather than by collection. Once navigating to the women’s section, the grid layout carries over from the home page, but there is also a split screen with two scroll bars. This could prove somewhat confusing or overwhelming, but does allow the site to push a ton of content and descriptors onto one page, which may help drive traffic from a search perspective.

Providing frequent website updates can help a brand stay relevant, not only through its content but also by staying up to date with developments in web design and architecture. Incremental changes make it easier to stay on the forefront of a competitive market that demands unique online experiences, meaningful content, and ease of use – and that’s just once the customer is already on the site. Driving customers to the online flagship requires proper understanding of the back end design as well, which Aston Martin and Marc Jacobs appear to recognize and work towards.