Louboutin – A good shoe is one that doesn’t dress you, but undress you

Louboutin, a French luxury shoe label established by Christian Louboutin in 1991, is well known for its famous signature red sole. There are more than 70 boutiques spread across the world. The products of Louboutin can be bought via the official Louboutin website, selected department stores and the Louboutin boutiques.

The red soles

The signature red sole distinguishes the shoes from other shoe brands. The red sole has become a trademark and will be forever associated with the brand identity of Louboutin. Recently Louboutin won a lawsuit from Yves-Saint Laurent, who wanted to use the red sole image as well. The judge stated that the sole can only be red if the whole shoe is red, in any other case Louboutin has the exclusive right of using the red sole for its shoes.

Due to smart marketing – trademarking the red soles – Christian Louboutin managed to establish a strong brand and a strong brand image. An image that is associated with high fashion status and class.

As quoted by Christian Louboutin: “The shiny red color of the soles has no function other than the identity that they are mine. I selected the color because it is engaging, flirtatious, memorable and the color of passion.”

Christian Louboutin doesn’t believe in advertising because in his opinion he doesn’t need it, he lets the distinctive red color of the soles do the work for him, namely the product itself sells the shoes. Nevertheless in 2009 Christian Louboutin started using small advertising campaigns that resemble shoes as art. These advertisements do not appear on TV but only in some editorial magazines and selected department stores.

Target audience

The customer base of Christian Louboutin exists mostly out of wealthy people – prices of the shoes start at +/- 500$ – and celebrities. The core business exists of shoes and in 2003 the brand was extended with handbags and purses and in 2011 the first men’s footwear collection was launched. The most recent extension of the brand is nail polish, launched in July, 2014. With this latest extension they aim to broaden the customer base to less wealthy people – price of the nail polish is 50$.

The audience targeted through social media are mainly women of all ages who want to look sexy and beautiful and want to make their legs as long as possible.

Social media

The brand Louboutin is active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and a lot of people pin pictures of Louboutin on Pinterest. Louboutin uses social media to engage with his (loyal) fans across the world – to have a global presence – to keep them posted about new product releases and news features. Louboutin tries to tailor the social media to their customers in different parts of the world due to their customers distinctive usage patterns on social media and tries to take note of their consumer behavior.

Through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Louboutin tries to invite the consumers to share their opinions and thoughts instead of forcing them to buy the products – the use of a pull strategy instead of a push strategy. Louboutin tries to stay away from traditional marketing overload and uses attractive visuals. They try to avoid “stalking” their followers and place only a few posts, tweets,… a month.

On YouTube you can find interviews with Chrsitian Louboutin about his passion for shoes, the love for his work and his ongoing efforts in trying to make women feel confident, independent and strong.

The success of Louboutin is translated into digital superiority on social media. From a study conducted by the Digital Luxury Group, Louboutin is the most sought after shoe brand and generates the most Facebook and Twitter engagement.

Some of the aspects of the strategy of Louboutin can be applied on The Hyde Street Journal. It can be a good idea to post or tweet about news events on Facebook and Twitter and try to initiate a discussion, so that people can really take part in it and be able to share their opinions. Even making a movie and placing it on YouTube could raise the attention for the blog.

Sources

christianlouboutin.com

digitalluxurygroup.com

elle.com

facebook.com

instagram.com

nbcnewyork.com

newyorker.com

partialobjects.com

twitter.com

vogue.com

YouTube.com

Social Media Analysis: Volkswagen

Volkswagen AG is the biggest German company with a worldwide sales revenue of about $250bn and a vehicle production of more then 9.25 million per year.

 The Facebook-Page of Volkswagen (general) has gotten about 1.5 million likes and a very structured design with  a lot of information. They post only one time a day to be sure that there followers don’t feel spammed. The Posts are about VW-events, new cars or its just a beautiful or a cool picture. They promote especially the cars for young customers like the UP!, Golf, Scirocco or Polo because this is still the main group using Facebook. They also use the possibility of links to their homepage or other social media accounts and hashtags. Volkswagen has many other Facebook-Pages for special products or special countries for example the VW USA page has nearly 3 million likes. The Posts from every page are different depending on the kind of customers that like it who like it. In the USA , rallies are much more popular than in Germany so there are much more Posts about this topic.

The Twitter-Page is similar but contains more small tweets because there is another way to use this social media also there are a lot of different accounts like on Facebook the same for Youtube,  Google+ and Instagram. On Youtube there are mainly presentations of new cars or for example a campaign to promote the e-cars.

The target audience of their social media strategy is clear. They accommodate there appearance to the users of the social media sites so its different from the customer base of the company. The most people using social media are young and the most people who buy new cars are old so this kind of advertisement doesn’t really reach the main customer base of the company but there are so many customers only in the niches the pages that it makes sense to create an own page for every niche.

Every company should create accounts on social media sites. It’s not a lot of work and a very good way to keep possible costumers in the mind of possible customers. It’s a cheap way to inform the people and for example on Facebook it’s very easy for small companies to get new customers because also the friends of persons who are interested in your page or company will see a link to your site so it’s sharing on his own for free.

http://www.statista.com/topics/1574/volkswagen/

https://twitter.com/VW

https://www.youtube.com/user/myvolkswagen

https://plus.google.com/+vw/posts

http://instagram.com/vw

https://www.facebook.com/VW

https://www.facebook.com/VolkswagenDE

https://www.facebook.com/Volkswagen

Tommy Hilfiger’s social media strategy

The customer base of Tommy Hilfiger is women, men and children. The Hilfiger followers on different social medias are women and men who seems to have the same age as the models present on the brand web site. Followers and models are in their twenties and thirties.

The fact that the followers and models used by Tommy Hilfiger brand are the same, shows that the brand knows their customers. An other evidence of Tommy Hilfiger working strategy is that we know they have 9,500,000 people who like their facebook page, they have 720,000 followers on Twitter, 364,000 on Intagram, etc… That means a lot of people are following them through the social media and they are connecting with the brand.

But we don’t have enough information to know if their social media strategy is working or not to increase the sales of the brand. We can suppose that Tommy Hilfiger is learning a lot of information through social media about their customers. How they react after a new post, which one they like more, which one they like less, what about their age, gender, country, etc… If this hypothesis is correct, Tommy Hilfiger would have a lot of followers to know which way to go.

The Tommy’s Hilfiger social media strategy could be a source of inspiration for our journal by following simple rules like :

To be on different social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc…

To animate the different media with a daily content, like promoting our articles, our website, our events, etc…

To diversify the content, with text, photos, videos,…

To answer quickly to the followers

XM

Heineken – Open your world!

One of the most famous beer brands in the world is definitely Heineken. Nearly everyone either knows this brand or has at least heard of it. Now with more than 8 million likes, Heineken is by far the most liked beer on Facebook. On Twitter it has even more likes. Therefore the question arises why this is so? What makes the iconic green beer bottle so popular?

1.

Well, Heineken at least posts once a day on its Facebook page, inducing likes and comments with pictures or videos. Moreover, the brand uses 15% of its marketing budget just for social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Instagram. Heineken doesn’t want its users to leave the brand behind by just clicking like. Pressing the like button should basically be the beginning and not the end. The user should think “this brand speaks to me”, and therefore Heineken has to create a dialogue with the consumer. Furthermore, Heineken is known for sponsoring soccer events, such as the UEFA Champions League for example. Thereto, I have to add that soccer is still the most popular sport in the world. Lots of pictures or video spots, which are published on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, still deal with the sport.

Customer base of Heineken:

Nearly everyone who is allowed to drink alcohol has drunk Heineken, no matter what gender. So the customer base of Heineken is basically everyone who is legally allowed to consume alcohol.

Target audience of Heineken:

Heinekens target audience is not the same as its customer base. The brand focuses on men of the age between 18 and 45. Heinekens ads (e.g. pictures or videos) on Facebook or Youtube often show either students who are having fun with a bottle of beer at a party, or middle-aged men who are meeting their friends at a bar after work. There is a famous spot of Heineken on Youtube for example which first shows a group of women who are entering a small unknown room. Inside this room are hundreds of shoes, which makes the group completely freak out.  Next to this room is another one, which is entered by a group of young men. Inside this room are hundreds of Heineken bottles, which make the men completely freak out. Through this ad spot Heineken’s target audience can easily be explained.

2.

Heinekens social media marketing strategy will most likely work in the future. Though, there are still a few things Heineken has to think about, such as the demographical change in some countries. Less babies and more elder people would mean that they lose customers, because their targeting audience is between the age of 18 and 45. Anyway, why are they just targeting men between the age of 18 and 45? Heineken considered that and has recently started to target also elder men at the age of 50 and beyond. That’s a good start for a successful future.
Furthermore, as I already said, Heineken focuses on soccer. In Europe, soccer is already the most popular sport, whereas in the USA or in Asia it is not. But it is slowly getting more and more popular there as well. So by focusing on soccer they could definitely increase the number of customers.

3.

It would be good for a small company to create a “like page” on Facebook, as well as one on Twitter. Daily posting pictures or videos of the products or services the company provides would help to get more and more popular. After a certain time, the company could also think about investing in those networks. By investing in Facebook for example, more and more random people will see the pictures or videos you post, because Facebook helps you to make your site get more popular.

M.V.