Luxury Brands and Internet Marketing

I came across an article about the inertia many luxury brands face when it comes to adopting Internet marketing and the social media.  Here are some key takeaways:

Myth: The Web is Not a Luxury Market

Fact: According to an eMarketer report in 2007, the number of affluent Internet users will grow from 43.7 million in 2006 to 57.1 million in 2011.

Challenges that luxury brands face in Internet marketing:

• Balancing exclusivity and how it chooses to interact with online users
• Hesitation in experimenting with Internet marketing strategies in fear that such untested strategies are too risky for their brand image
• High costs of maintaining a consistent (in terms of aesthetics) image across their online assets (websites, apps, etc)

The article then goes on to offer some solutions to these challenges; aligning the brand marketers’ perceptions of the brand with the consumers’; creating exclusive, invite-only sites; and reputation management.

Lastly, it looks at how Gucci and Mercedes tackled Internet marketing with very different approaches but similarly favorable results.

Read the full article here