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Why luxury brands must behave differently on social media

Luxury brands are in a difficult position when it comes to social media. They are in a digital no-man’s land. On the one hand they are consistently reading that social media is the place to be and on the other they have a marketing history which has tended to shy away from mass communication tools.

Brands, such as Dolce & Gabbana, are built on the intangible factors of exclusivity. Yes they may appear in The Times but you’d never see them in The Sun. Social media is, at its heart, a communication tool for the masses. There is no segmenting the market: high income families do not congregate on twitter, while the working class spend their time ‘poking’ on Facebook.

Therefore, if a luxury brand jumps on the social media bandwagon and engages fully with the public, it runs the risk of losing its exclusivity. Luxury brands are not developed to speak to the common man. A luxury brand then cannot approach social media in the same way that the majority of brands do. They must take a different approach to the medium: Whereas volume of messages is normally seen as crucial, it may be better for a luxury brand to have a strict limit on the amount of time they engage with consumers. By keeping their distance from the consumer they maintain their mystique.

The tone of voice they adopt is also very difficult to get just right. Communicate using simple language or slang and you devalue your brand. Communicate in to high brow a fashion and you risk alienating all your customers.

In conclusion then, luxury brands simply have to be elusive but visible and wordsmiths yet understandable!

Here at Juice Digital we don’t have all the answers, and we would love to hear your experiences on social media with luxury brands, and also brands in general!

Tom McKenna