How do consumers feel about luxury brands – and why? We wanted to know, so we used social monitoring to analyze the top 100 global luxury brands.
We looked at volume of conversation, awareness (as a measure of earned impressions), reach (a measure of owned impressions), Net Sentiment, and Brand Passion as measured and analyzed through the NetBase platform from January 1st 2017 to January 1st 2018.
Using themes to unlock underlying sentiment we indexed and ranked each brand by averaging actual position for each metric (ranked relative to the other brands in the list), with the largest, most positive, or most passionate brands ranking first.
Our English-language only/country agnostic analysis examines top trends and overall performance of selected brand conversations across several social channels in the following categories:
- Automobiles
- Beauty
- Fashion
- High-end
- Hotels
- Jewelry
- Luxury eCommerce & Retail
Here’s a sneak peek at what our newest report reveals:
There’s a Lot of Passion for Luxury
As a category, luxury brands get a lot of love. Though our luxury Top 10 accounts for a lower volume of conversation than the Top 10 in other industry reports, the Brand Passion Index is much higher than other reports.
This isn’t so surprising when you consider the aspirational nature of luxury brands. However, it’s important to know the specifics as they apply to your brand, since passion is not equal across the board.
For example, Moda Operandi generated a fairly small number of mentions – just over 150K, as compared to the millions of some other brands in our top 100. However, their Net Sentiment ranks at 97%, with Passion Intensity at 100%!
These two metrics combine to deliver a Brand Passion Index of 100% – meaning their small audience is extraordinarily in love with them.
On the flip side, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts have a similar number of mentions at just under 150K – however their Net Sentiment comes in at 14%, with a Passion Intensity of 96%. That means there’s a lot of hate being shared on social media. We’ll talk about why in a moment.
What Drives the Conversation About Luxury Automobiles?
First let’s look at the Automobile category – which has the highest share of voice (45%) given its relatively small category representation (15%).
What is it revving consumers’ engines? Looking at some common themes we discovered safety, performance, and excitement were most discussed – depending on the car.
Naturally, you need to know what theme matters to your specific audiences if you’re going to speak to what matters most to them. But it’s also important to understand what sets competitors apart so you can tweak your own brand initiatives as needed.
Passion Spikes and What They Mean
Meanwhile, the Beauty category offers lessons in spikes of passion. These flares of passion occur for any number of reasons. It’s your job to investigate why.
Longer trends in negativity are also important to understand, bringing us back to the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, mentioned above. When we looked closely at the themes inspiring their negativity, we discovered “booking” was the reason behind the passionate distaste for the brand.
With solid intel to work from, any brand can do better. Without it, you might as well hand your business to the competition.
The Power of Instagram
The Beauty category, along with Jewelry, reveals Instagram as a popular channel for sharing trends. Some brands are seeing as much as 50% of their conversation happening there.
Other brands are not taking enough advantage of Instagram. This leaves the door open for brands with smaller share of voice – like those in the Fashion Brands category (2%) – to dominate on this popular, but underused, channel.
Just another reminder that all facets of social must be monitored for insights – from content, to channels, to consumer preferences. And don’t ever take love for granted, because it’s never guaranteed.
Which brands should you watch out for? And which can step up their game to take their brand love further into the stratosphere?
Download the NetBase Industry Report 2018: Luxury Brands for the full skinny, and look for our Luxury Brands Best Practices Report coming soon! And review the social media ranking index – it offers a global brands leaderboard, comparing mentions, reach, awareness, and most importantly – how passionate consumers feel about each brand.
Want to see how your brand measures up against competitors? Reach out for a customized demo of our social monitoring tools!
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