In the pursuit of young shoppers, luxury brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior have increased their digital platform spending. Cash rich luxury goods groups LVMH and Kering are amongst those who have increased their social media budgets and one of their main targets is Instagram.
Bloggers and influencers, usually with four million plus followers, charge up to £18,000 for sponsored posts, according to Reuters. Kering – owner of fast-growing Gucci, which, according to data trackers Tribe Dynamics, scored the highest level of publicity impact on social media last year – said on Friday that half its 2018 media budget was spent on digital advertising, up from 20% only three years earlier.
“There’s a big shift in how we’re thinking about advertising and creating aspiration,” Kering’s digital chief Gregory Boutte told journalists.
“Now with every type of social platform, you need different types of videos, of pictures. You don’t create content on YouTube as you do on TV.”
Kering’s rival LVMH increased its total marketing spend at the fastest rate in seven years in 2018 to £5 billion, reaching 12% of group revenues.
Louis Vuitton, LVMH’s major sales driver, now allocates half its marketing costs to digital media, the brand’s CEO Michael Burke said at a closed-door briefing this week, according to Citi analysts.
