Wondering how top Automobile, Beauty, Fashion, High-end, Hotels, Jewelry, eCommerce and Retail luxury brands are faring in this increasingly social media-driven environment? So were we! You can see what we discovered in NetBase’s 2019 Luxury Brands Industry Report – but first, a preview with some highlights!
Social Listening & Taking Action
Every second someone posts about a brand online. That’s as assumption, but an informed one to make, considering 500 million tweets are sent each day; and every 60 seconds on Facebook there are 510,000 comments posted, 293,000 statuses updated, and 136,000 photos uploaded; and, last but certainly not least – 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram each day!
To assume a post per second is about a brand is likely understating things.
Either way, it’s important to note that these posts can decide the fate of your brand, so making consumer experience (CX) a top priority is wise. And you can’t do this effectively unless you’re monitoring CX in real time – and deriving actionable insight from what you discover. This is something the top brands in our report do masterfully.
Take Aesop cosmetics, offering a cruelty-free makeup line.
Online spoke – loudly – and Aesop listened:
But although doing good is a popular and lucrative theme online, sometimes it’s not so much about taking the right action as it is about partnering with the right influencer.
Influence Matters – A Lot. And KPOP Can’t Be Stopped
Sometimes you’ll see influencer marketing poo-pooed as much ado about nothing, but that’s a misguided observation better aimed at inflaters. Influencers – the right influencers – offer targeted, authentic access to consumers. And the biggest Millennial and Gen Z influencers right now inhabit the KPOP (Korean Pop Music) space.
“A common theme among the top 10 is that many of these brands have increased visibility as a result of partnering in some way with a member of a KPOP band (KPOP bands have millions of followers and their fans are extremely passionate) or working with influencers or celebrities to extend their reach.”
Who are The Best of The Best?
We followed an assortment of luxury brands – 100 in all – from January 1, 2018 to January 1, 2019 and uncovered top trends as well as passion and sentiment metrics in each category.
Here are the overall top three:
Chanel jumped 30 spots to snag the #2 spot. How? And by what measure? Well, without giving away too much of the good stuff, here are some measurements you’ll find inside, along with a brief explanation of each:
- Net Sentiment: a score that expresses a ratio of positive to negative sentiment about a brand or topic, ranging from +100 to -100. A score of 100 means that all opinions of a brand are positive, a score of -100 would mean that all opinions of a brand or topic category are negative. Sentiment alone doesn’t paint the entire picture about a brand . . .
- Passion Intensity: helps better understand how passionately people feel about a brand. It’s a score between 0 and 100 that expresses the ratio of strong emotions (such as love or hate) to weak emotions (such as like or dislike).
- Brand Passion Intensity score (BPI): combination of net sentiment and passion intensity that offers extensive insight. It can tell us how a brand compares to its top competitors and how it has trended over time.
Just because one brand does well by one measure does NOT guarantee it will rank as well on another. It’s an interesting comparison to make – and one we discuss in-depth in the report.
Most Important of All
Consumers are faced with a dizzying array of choices – both online and off. It can be overwhelming.
They seek simplified online access and a personal touch, even though they know this is pretty impossible at scale. They suspend their disbelief as long as brands make an effort to provide relevant, authentic interactions.
In the luxury space, consumers are a bit more demanding, craving artistic expression and the ability to personalize and express themselves to a finer point.
Making sure your products offer the easiest, most rewarding purchase experience requires lots of legwork and constant monitoring, but brands able to keep pace with changing trends are wildly successful. And some of the intel you’ll find in our 2019 Luxury Brands Industry Report will help get you hit the ground running.
Or you can reach out for a demo and we can show you how social listening can make an enormous difference for your brand’s bottom line – in the luxury category and beyond.
