The Up-to-date Bird Catches the Customers Online

Among the many dilemmas that luxury companies need to solve, one is particularly urgent: how to preserve aspirational codes in communication through social media, which are democratic by definition?
This is the question that the Social Media Fashion Monitor set out to answer. This monitor was developed in February 2011 as part of MAFED, the SDA Bocconi Master in Fashion, Experience & Design Management. It has looked at a sample of more than one hundred firms operating in the luxury and fashion industry. The sample was composed of companies having a turnover in excess of €10 million and established in Milan, either with a mono-brand store in the fashion district or with a corner store at Rinascente-Duomo, which differ in terms of market positioning and business models. This variety has made it possible to compare the different ways of communicating that brands such as Hermes or Armani (luxury & fashion), Diesel and Miss Sixty (premium), Zara and H&M (mass market) have when it comes to social media.
The monitor ranked firms according to their level of digital sophistication, ranging from Web 0.0 (lowest) to Web 3.0 (highest). The first findings were that around 40% of sampled companies are still either in the Web 0.0 or Web 1.0 era, i.e. they either have no web platform or have no social media platform. The majority of luxury firms that have been monitored fall into the Web 2.0-basic category, having at least one social platform, web-oriented language, but a low level of interaction with fans. In the Web 2.0-advanced category we find brands like Louis Vuitton and Tommy Hilfiger, which display virtual catwalks and provide a higher level of interaction with users. The highest (Web 3.0) level is marked by very high interaction, info-commerce effectiveness, and e-tailing customization through social media. This the case of fashion firms like Gucci and Burberry, which represent a minimal (5%) percentage of the sample.
From the study it emerges that social media differentiate fashion and luxury firms on three levels: content, language, and services.
Content must open up the firm to the eyes of fans, so that they can glance at tailoring, design, and presentation of the collections, while the social platform must seek to bring the fan/follower to the store, either physical or digital. For instance, Gucci and Louis Vuitton have put real-time defilés on Facebok, while Jimmy Choo has proposed a geolocalized treasure hunt in London, across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Four Square. Company posts must not only be about products, they must be potentially interesting for fans/followers, so as to establish a conversation and a channel of communication. Language must be web-oriented, i.e. direct, informal, intriguing and not self-referential. Writing posts and tag lines in form of questions is a golden rule.
In terms of e-tailing services, social media offer numerous possibilities: personalized shoppers, direct mailing on product availability, customer differentiation, etc. In the next few years, the final objective, in luxury and mass markets alike, will be to achieve transmedia storytelling, through which the customer will be enveloped by a whole narrative that will seamlessly take him/her from online to offline points of communication and sale.