Due to the impact of the epidemic, luxury brands are accelerating the transformation of traditional marketing methods.
On July 17, GUCCI held a 12-hour live fashion show. This marathon-style live show was a courageous attempt by GUCCI. Fortunately, it also received good market feedback. As the exclusive live broadcast platform of GUCCI in China, Weibo has been viewed 15.74 million times.
As an important marketing node for luxury brands, offline fashion shows usually carry the mission of building momentum and breaking the circle, thereby affecting the product design trends of the fashion industry. However, under the influence of this year’s epidemic, the offline fashion shows of luxury brands have suffered Unprecedented impact, this is also an opportunity for GUCCI's super long live show.
GUCCI's live fashion show uses "Epilogue" (final) as the theme of the series, which seems to mean an ambition to announce the end of the old fashion industry. The press conference started with a snowflake screen, which also matched the creative director Alexanjo Micheli's consistent retro concept. Since Micheli began serving as the creative director of GUCCI in 2015, art, retro, and feelings have always become important design features of GUCCI.
The fashion show is still presented in a live broadcast with retro electronic images. In addition to the live show, the audience can also see the construction and exhibition of the entire live show and chat with models. The audience can enter every room and experience the entire release in depth. The whole process of the meeting.
Obviously, no user can really insist on watching the GUUCI live show in 12 hours, and there will not be too many passers-by audiences watching the chats of the staff behind the scenes in front of the screen. However, in the interpretation of many observers, this kind of "performance art" is just the ideal expression that GUCCI hopes to do. Through alternative live broadcast narrative methods, the live show is abstracted as an artistic concept itself, thereby realizing criticism and criticism of the current fashion industry. change.
GUCCI creative director Mikari said that the live broadcast itself is a process of role change, projecting the interior of the fashion industry to the exterior, "letting invisible objects emit shapes as they burn themselves." In May of this year, Micheli also stated on social media that in the future, the traditional fashion show release plan of four times a year will no longer be followed, and will be replaced by a bi-annual boutique presentation.
Compared with other luxury brands, GUCCI has made more dramatic changes in the operation of its own fashion brands. Behind this is still the pressure of digital transformation of luxury brands, and the outbreak of the epidemic has intensified this pressure.
According to the 2020 first quarter financial report of Kering Group, the group's revenue fell 15.4% year-on-year to 3.203 billion euros, of which the core brand Gucci's sales plummeted 22.4% to 1.804 billion euros. In addition, LVMH Group’s first-quarter revenue fell 17% year-on-year to 10.6 billion euros, Hermes Group’s first quarter fell 7.7% year-on-year to 1.51 billion euros, Richemont (as of June 30) New Year’s first quarter sales fell 47 year-on-year % To 1.933 billion euros.
At present, it is difficult to see whether the GUCCI series of reforms led by Mikari have worked, but it has chosen a new marketing strategy that is completely different from LV in the Chinese market.
The first live broadcast of luxury goods came from a live broadcast between LV and Xiaohongshu in March this year. Although it attracted a lot of topics, the visual effect of the LV live broadcast room was accused of "full of earthy flavor", so it was on social networks. China's reputation was mediocre, and was once regarded as a representative of the digital spread of luxury goods.
Unlike LV, this GUCCI live broadcast chooses a more popular Weibo platform, and uses celebrities and fashion KOLs to jointly create an onlooker effect. Weibo live broadcast also opens a barrage function for audiences to interact in real time. . Compared with LV Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast of sitting and chatting, GUCCI’s live broadcast is longer, more diverse and rich in content. The fashion show is an important global communication event for the brand, while LV Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast looks more like A new channel of dissemination test the waters.
It is not difficult to find that GUCCI's marketing digitization is more thorough and more radical. In June of this year, GUCCI even launched a new live shopping service Gucci Live. Through the Gucci Live service, users can communicate with shop assistants in the form of video on the mobile terminal, which can be said to be an online luxury store. According to Gucci, Gucci Live is a project developed this spring. At present, its services have been expanded to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and other regions, and will also be expanded to New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore and other regions in the future.
Although GUCCI has carried out many changes in fashion concepts and fashion marketing, it is still vague in terms of how luxury goods deal with the relationship with young users and the rejuvenation of the brand. In a sense, GUCCI's Weibo live broadcast is contradictory in connotation, which can be seen from the selection of its stars.
Due to the epidemic, GUCCI organized a special dinner for Chinese stars and added it to the content of this cloud live broadcast. GUCCI invited eight stars including Chen Linong, Huang Minghao, Ding Yuxi, Hu Yitian, Song Yanfei, Zhao Lusi, Jiang Zhenyu, Xu Yiyang, among which the youngest star was Huang Minghao who was born in 2002, and the biggest was Hu Yitian who was born in 1993. Almost all of them are post-95 florets, which has caused some controversy among netizens.
GUCCI’s invitation to traffic Xiaohua should be based on marketing considerations for young people. According to Tencent data, 58% of luxury consumers are young people aged 18 to 30. The decline in the age of luxury audiences is already a clear trend. Become a target user group that cannot be ignored for luxury brands.
In order to cope with young consumer groups, most luxury brands also adopt young spokespersons in their communication. From Prada signing Cai Xukun to Wu Yifan signing Burberry and LV, almost every traffic star has a luxury brand cooperation. However, from the perspective of external evaluations, every luxury contract traffic star will cause a lot of online disputes, and the key to the dispute is whether the sinking of spokespersons, user groups, and communication channels will cause the sinking of the brand, thereby lowering the brand's tone. .
Among them, Dior, as one of the most active luxury brands to test the waters of youthful marketing, has received industry attention by actively entering Douyin and Station B. However, through research data, it can be found that Dior has been in the dimension of brand reputation in recent years. Being challenged. According to the "Chinese Brand Influence Research Report (2019)" edited by the research team of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 42 brands have "higher visibility but low reputation", and Dior is one of the few luxury brands listed. Product brand.
The luxury industry needs to undergo changes has become a consensus in the industry, but how to balance the relationship between corporate growth and brand power will be the key to the digital transformation of luxury goods. Brands such as GUCCI, LV, and Dior have all given their own answers and actions. Although we are still unable to predict its specific future performance and user feedback, it is certain that the luxury goods industry is ushering in a reshuffle.
