Yves Saint Laurent - Luxury Brands on Social Media #LeWeb

Well its LeWeb, so I of course had to cover the iconic brand, Yves Saint Laurent.

Carla shared many of the commonalities that luxury brands have with others. In that they tailor their message to the platform, be it Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. They try to be everywhere their customers are and mobile is a large focus as they try to digitise all of their marketing and offer ’thematic value add’ experiences of the brand.

She also talked of an ongoing VIP blogger relationship program, that involves daily contact with the brand. Carla emphasises that their ‘blogger outreach’ succeeds because they give innovative content with an angle that is novel. They like to co-create and in each country have a ‘Luxury’ top three or so bloggers that they work with. Her advice is to be open and transparent, they are looking for REAL breaking news, not marketing fluff.

An interesting note, that is obvious in hindsight, is that those that were true luxury brands became so rough innovation, and of course, bloggers and fans, are expecting this.

Their Heathrow airport campaign is an example of their innovation, which ties to my belief that content needs not only to be sticky to keep people on your website but also slippery. In that it can be shared to social media.

In Heathrow a few weeks back, they ran an xbox Kinex screen that let visitors ‘Paint’ with their products. You could then scan a custom QR code to share it online. Their website featured a library of the paintings and they then gave away samples, to those that shared and checked in on foursquare – a full experience that connects online and offline.