A Changed Landscape
While last year’s summit was hosted in Milan, O’Hara recalled, plans they made for 2020, “changed overnight when we instantly shifted our collective priorities to the things that mattered most; The safety of our employees and their loved ones, the continuity of our business, the quality of the products that we make and the values that would guide our actions, our interactions and our reactions to the circumstances around us.”
The hope is that this current period of retrenchment can lead to a rebirth of Luxury. O’Hara believes that fashion and luxury are poised to play an even more central role in our lives because of the pent up demand. Hearst, she added, is central to helping brands tell their stories, offering brands, “the highest quality environment and the most highly engaged audiences.”
The Future of Luxury Retail
Stellene Volandes, Editor in Chief Town and Country and Editorial Director ELLE Décor, discussed the future of luxury retail with Oliver Chen, Managing Director, Luxury and Retail, Cowen and Company. For Chen, there are certain truisms about the luxury retail experience that are forever and transcend events. “People haven’t changed in the importance of intimate service and personalization. Great customer service as well as integrating emotions and personalization in the experience is unchanged,” he explained, “But, technology, mobile, artificial intelligence and personalization platforms are all great tools to offer better service.”
Is there a disconnection between the advancement of technological personalization and the type of in-person interaction that luxury consumers have come to expect from sales people? “Mobile is the new mall,” stated Chen. “All the interaction measurement that happens in the mobile phone when you are scrolling, touching your purchasing history those can all be ask points that help inform what product you want, how to really make the shopping experience frictionless … and help customers save time. Time is the ultimate luxury and convenience is a big factor.”
So the convenience and ease of technology is a plus, but there could a downside. “How can luxury differentiate in a world where everything is available at all times? And what is Luxury and what is exclusivity in the age of ecommerce?” he asked. The answer is brand power that has, “supreme reCommerce and ad experiential,” in a world of the, “uberfication of luxury.” For Volandes, Luxury is visceral and has been reclaimed from genericization during the pandemic. “We know what luxury is because we know what it feels like and at the core of the luxury experience is how it makes you feel.” Chen added that Luxury is, “about heritage, craftsmanship of the brands and storytelling.”
The future of luxury rests in the younger consumer, more of whom are millionaires, especially in China, according to Chen, as well as the trend towards, “casualization. Because the way people dress now is very dawn to dusk. You’re looking for versatility and value and a lot of the prestige is in the mix, how you sort yourself in personal style and not necessarily head-to-toe in one brand.” In sum, however, it is vital to know your customer, understand that, “the future is digital plus physical,” and keeping in mind, “the three Cs – Convenience, product Curation and Culture.”
Keeping Heritage Brands Relevant in a Cross Platform World
Maintaining a relevant presence among consumers requires the understanding that Luxury is highly personal and, as Nina Garcia, Editor in Chief, ELLE, noted, “Use our access and our platforms to really communicate what is happening and how we can have more social responsibility, raise awareness of issues that are happening in our culture.” Nick Sullivan, Creative Director, Esquire, explained that, “Magazines are the original influencers, whether we are talking about politics or fashion or anything. The context of knowledge that a magazine has amassed over the years, particularly focused in its staff at any one time, is a huge responsibility to tell the right story.” Digital makes it a bigger platform, Garcia added.
In the past year, ELLE has responded to world events by making, ”Our content a little more nuanced and thoughtful than ever, with information that the reader couldn’t get anywhere else and had meaning with what we were going through,” stated Garcia. Fashion reportage also changed so ELLE could keep the same quality as before the lockdown while being sensitive to the new landscape.
Luxury Data and Activation
“Luxury is all about relevance and creating desire,” explained Todd Haskell, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Hearst Magazines. With all of the uncertainty regarding consumer attitudes during the pandemic, what long lasting changes, if any, would continue post-pandemic. “Would people still shop? Would they treat themselves? Would they indulge? Would they even put on a great outfit? The answer has been undoubtedly, yes. Not despite the pandemic but because of it,” he revealed, adding, “The word ‘Luxury’ has regained its meaning. It’s about feeing and experiencing something that alters a mood.”
Haskell, using Hearst’s first party proprietary data across 27 diverse brands, every demographic and every category demonstrated that Luxury spans all platforms in addition to supporting Hearst’s print audiences. In the past year, Hearst’s platforms experienced robust digital growth, video views and social followers while driving over $1billion in transactions to affiliate partners. Hearst monitors activity from a myriad of sources and devices, capturing and ingesting 4.2 trillion data points every month. “The better we know our audiences the more precisely we can deliver content experiences that speak to their needs which helps us extract even more data and insight on the reader across every platform,” he noted and added that 2020 was a record-breaking ecommerce year for the company.
Crafting Editorial Content
What does innovation look like from the editorial perspective? “Content drives commerce and commerce drives content,” Haskell stated. This means that editors are focused on the data to help inform content decisions so they can be as strong and relevant as possible. To this end, the company uses a range of techniques including segmentation, content targeting and AI that can use both Hearst’s data and any other first party data set. But how has this impacted content creation? Samira Nasr, Senior Editor, Harpers Bazaar posed this question to Joyann King, Executive Director Development, Town & Country ELLE Décor, Nikki Ogunnaike, Digital Director Harpers Bazaar and Michael Sebastian, Editor and Chief, Esquire.
King referred to Town & Country wedding content. “2020 changed everyone’s plans drastically,” she noted and resulted in content that pivoted to reflect pared down plans and focus on elements, “that would withstand the test of time,” such as jewelry information. “Use the authority in the space that you have,” she advised.
For Sebastian, “some of the fundamentals of content creation haven’t changed though. Great storytelling remains the same that it did before the pandemic," but the way storytelling is executed has changed to accommodate social distancing and lockdown. One big change, however, is how Esquire writes about restaurants and bars. “We became advocates for the industry and the people who were struggling or out of work,” and editorials about the need for government assistance.
Ogunnaike noted that, “People are looking for community across platforms. We are seeing success on Instagram, sharing beautiful imagery through our print magazines, videos from various fashion shows, coverage from the inauguration with thought pieces around that.” In addition, she also sees how the fashion industry has come together in mutual support to adapt and innovate. “It’s been heartwarming to see,” she explained.
Conclusion
While 2020 had challenges, it also presented opportunities. From deep data gathering insights to careful content creation, to finding new ways to get creative with technology, Luxury brands may have experienced a reset in 2020 but this adjustment makes it a powerhouse for growth in 2021.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
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