Influencer Marketing Trends For Luxury
Brands In 2018
I’ve never really considered myself an “influencer’ until
I received an email from a long time follower of my blog. In the message, a boy
who’s in junior high school from Brazil, told me that he had a class assignment
on writing about an “influential person who you look up to” – and he said he
wrote about me for this essay. I was of course very flattered and thanked him
for his support. At that moment, I also realized that we could all very well be
influencers as long as we can present something out there that matters and
would change the way the influenced think and make their decision.
As a blogger, I’ve worked with multiple different brands,
including both essential and luxury products. How I engage my audience changes
constantly, in part I think is due to the accelerating evolution of social
media platforms. Sometimes it’s really difficult to know what strategy would
work best for both you and the collaborator to enhance growth. Recently I
participated a survey from Fashion & Beauty Monitor, which entails influencer-marketing trends for
brands in 2018, mostly for the luxury sector. The survey consists of
opinions and responses from over 300 different influencers and brands
worldwide. Here are the result and breakdown based on the survey.
Creative control
Controlling the narrative of influencer-led
campaigns is also proving “very challenging” or “quite challenging” for 59%
luxury brands. Letting go of creative control is still a big risk for luxury
brands, and requires a complete overhaul in mindset and culture. It
demonstrates the importance of working with the right influencers who are
already respectful of the brand, and who can be trusted with editorial freedom.
Researching their previous endorsement history is another important
consideration.
Going forward, we will see influencers
negotiating partnerships and contracts more on their terms, taking the lead
with artistic direction. For example, fashion influencer Camille Charrière
was recently approached by Tommy Hilfiger to help promote its Gigi Hadid
capsule collection, for a five-figure fee. Unconvinced by the brief, she
negotiated complete freedom to do things her way, sourced a new photographer,
art directed a fashion shoot on the streets of Paris, and styled the collection
to her own taste.
Video content will
rise in importance
Just 11% of luxury brands say that they plan
to create more video content over the next 12 months, but this is a figure that
will undoubtedly grow. Brands like
Chanel, for example, are using video to phenomenal effect, with its YouTube
channel amassing more than 300 million viewers to date. It’s legendary ‘The one
that I want’ video starring Gisele Bundchen, which launched Chanel into the
social media universe is one of the most watched commercials of all time with
almost 17.5 million views on YouTube. It’s videos offer beautifully flowing
narrative, and increasingly feature rising social influencers who depict the
Chanel brand as part of an aspirational lifestyle.
More than a third of luxury
brands are expecting their influencer marketing budget to increase over the
next year
Encouragingly, although in The New Face of
Luxury report budget is cited as an obstacle to success for many luxury brands,
66% say they expect their budget to increase “moderately” or “significantly”
over the next 12 months. This is a view shared by 47% of non-luxury brands.
Analyzing audience
insights
When luxury brands were asked to rank what
the single most important criteria for successful brand-influencer
collaboration was, 44% said it was finding the right influencer. Yet when they
listed their biggest challenges, finding the right match emerged on top.
Perhaps because 78% of luxury brands admit they are still searching for
influencers through social media manually, despite this being a time consuming,
laborious process.
The coming months will see marketers get
smarter about the identification process. Influencer audience data such as
demographics, social listening, and brand affinities will be key in
differentiating a big-budgeted influencer marketing campaign, from a successful
one.
Influencer Victoria Magrath from InTheFrow
says: “I would hope to see brands being more selective over their influencer
choices, working on longer term campaigns that grow as the affiliation between
the brand and influencer grows. Ideally it would follow the tradition of brand
and model muse relationship. Brands with digital muse will most definitely
access that digital audience that they need to build awareness.”
Managing influencer
relationships
Almost one half of luxury brands (46%)
expect to commit more resources to managing influencer relationships over the
coming year. This compares with a far more modest 18% of fashion and beauty
brands, indicating that the luxury sector is keen to explore the full potential
of influencer marketing in the coming months.
20% of luxury brands
expect to work more with micro-influencers
As brands grow their trust in social
influencers, it seems likely that relationships will become longer term
relationships and brands will also be more willing to hand over creative
control to the influencer they’re collaborating with.
Within the luxury fashion and beauty sector,
another likely shift will be increasing preference for collaborations with
‘micro-influencers’ who’ve established an exclusive niche for themselves via
their opinions, viewpoints and subject matter expertise. The attraction won’t
be their number of followers but rather their creative or artistic edge, and
their devoted and authentic audience, which can translate into high rate of
influence (ROI) for luxury brands.
According to Robin Shaw at Warm Street, it’s
critical that brands don’t go blindly into these micro-influencer
relationships, and particularly if they represent a music niche, for example,
that is new to the brand. “You really need to understand the influencer and
their market to get a meaningful ROI, and we spend most of our time researching
and handpicking the right influencers for the brand or campaign. If an artist
already buys into a brand that’s because they respect it, and likewise they
want to be respected in the same way. You need to care about what they’re
doing, know their objectives as an artist, how they are creatively drive etc.
Understand that micro-influencers won’t compromise their nice for a quick
buck.”
18% plan to begin
working with influencer in new ways.
Over the next 12 months, 18% of luxury
brands hope to be more experimental in the way they choose to work with
influencers, trying out new formats and ways of partnering.
Louise Rumball, founder of Chapter Three,
says: “I think we will start to see cross-collaborations between
non-competitive luxury brands, i.e.: connecting an influencer with first class
airline, typing up with a yacht brand or hotel as well as a luxury fashion
brand, and letting them document their journey. Once brands start co-sponsoring
content they can reach many more people for a reduced spend on content
creation.”
xx Do the things you are passionate about; Learn from ones who inspire you; Strive to become an expert at what you do xx
Binzento Vincente: A Fashion & Lifestyle Blog
