27 Mar SOCIAL MEDIA AND LUXURIOUS BRAND

Luxury has been associated with adjectives like expensive, exquisite, glamorous, hedonistic, rare, crafted, exotic, elitist, powerful, high quality etc. Luxury, itself is a subjective term.  For example; a millionaire flying in business class will treat it as normal, but for a normal employee flying business class is a matter of luxury. Luxury has different connotations and definitions, it is extravagant lifestyle, status symbol, power, dominance, wealth, etc. 

Luxury brands are the extract of luxury, i.e. they define a person’s status, their wealth generation and the source of their wealth generation. The opulence of luxury brands is its loyal customers who over the years have developed a relation with them, creating a space of mutual trust. Over the years, these customers have stayed loyal to brand creating a bigger brand image indirectly for the brand. For example; over the year’s women of certain class, especially the royalty and the novelty women of Europe have tended to suits tailored by Chanel creating an image prestige and power for the Chanel suits which still persists today. 

The making of brand image in today’s scenario has changed totally, wherein the past, the brand would persist over its loyal customer base, the exploding social media over the decades have given option to other brands that enter the market and generate wealth while targeting the larger audiences. The question that builds is, how will the luxury brand strive and grow in the competing era of social media? 

The social media has shown tremendous growth in the past decades and it is still a growing phenomenon. The youths of today rely more on social media than anyone for advice on latest fashion trend, styles off the runway and the glamorous looks. The youths of the high-end market, i.e. the wealthy kids are no excuse to this phenomenon, and luxury brands have a need to cater to generations of wealth to retain their brand power on the market. This prompts the luxury brands to take over the most opt and phenomenal platform, the social media¸ where they can cater to a large number of audiences, giving them a taste of luxury while retaining the base customers and their loyalties.

The classic Chanel Bag or the Gucci flip flops or the custom-tailored Burberry coat never fades out of style, they still have an image of prestige and wealth and it is because these are featured in social media in such a strategic way that says the vintage, the better and expensive. The tagline in the social media campaign makes it more alluring because it gives away the feeling of being luxurious but there are exception to this, brands like Gucci, Chanel or Versace never needed a tagline,  because their image is so luxurious, just their symbol is enough to give away the status of a person’s wealth.

Luxury brands social media is just a give away to average people as to what luxury looks like, but for the rich and famous, it is their new status symbol. Being featured in a luxury brands social media handle is a new type of prestige for the rich youths as it boosts not only their fame but along with it brand name too.