THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY - iCrossing · vertical, such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermès,...
Transcript of THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY - iCrossing · vertical, such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermès,...
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THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY:
by Borja Bartolomé Carrión, Business Development Manager, iCrossing Munich
BENCHMARKING THE DIGITAL PERFORMANCE OF LUXURY FASHION BRANDS
The majority of luxury fashion brands are aware of the importance of digital marketing ─ presenting their
collections online or streaming their catwalk shows, for example. Some are early adopters, and others are
laggards, but all of them have similar handicaps that generally can be attributed to a late adoption of
digital marketing. We believe CMOs of luxury brands have a major opportunity to improve their brands' digital
performances by implementing a converged media strategy that combines owned, earned and paid media
activities across all channels of digital marketing. Those are the conclusions of iCrossing Germany after
evaluating luxury brands against five categories of connectedness: visible, useful, usable, desirable, and
engaged. We examined brands included in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2012 ranking for the Luxury
vertical, such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermès, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Burberry, Prada and Ralph Lauren.
We applied metrics established by the iCrossing global organization in a 2011 report, Building a Connected
Brand: How Brands Can Become Publishers in the Real-Time Marketing World.
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
LACK OF LOCALIZATIONFew brands offer their websites, online shops or social media accounts in local languages, and yet by doing that, a brand can
maximise growth. A Spanish client will feel more comfortable buying online in Spanish rather than English, a Russian user would
rather connect with a brand on Vkontakte instead of Facebook, and a French fan of a brand will probably prefer to read a French
version of a company blog in his/her own language.
INCONSISTENT BRAND POSITIONINGMost of the brands analyzed experience problems using the same logos, images and messages across all the social media
accounts. A uniform perception of a brand across all touch points is essential. A current fan of a brand on Facebook, who would
like to connect with the same brand on Twitter, will probably search for the same account name on Twitter, and expects to find
the same logo there.
DISENGAGED AUDIENCES DUE TO INCONSTANT ACTIVITYThe majority of brands dedicate all their efforts to the most popular social networks: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter¬. Other
relevant ones, such as Instagram or Pinterest, that attract fashion savvy audiences display a low level of activity or even no
presence at all. Brands should deliver relevant and engaging content on a regular basis as publishers do.
FAILURE TO OFFER A PREMIUM AND TAILOR-MADE ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCEMost of the brands’ eShops offer nice, but not user-friendly, designs, with high quality media to present their products, but
far away from the optimization level of the travel or electronic retail industry. With their offline stores, they flourish by placing
their stores in exclusive buildings and offering first rate customer service with personal advisors. They should adopt the same
philosophy with their digital customers.
We found four common points that are still challenging for most of the brands:
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
FOCUSAt iCrossing we believe every brand should be a Connected Brand. Nowadays, to become a successful digital brand, the digital
marketing strategy needs to have a key focus: the user.
A Connected Brand speaks to and listens to its users, at the same time a Connected Brand engages with the users, offering them
a unique digital experience. The Connectedness of a company should be seen as a high-level approach within digital marketing,
using a consistent cross-channel strategy to connect with its audience.
CATEGORIESiCrossing analyzes how brands are performing from the digital user’s prospective by evaluating each brand according to five
categories that establish a brand as a Connected Brand: Visible, Useful, Usable, Desirable and Engaged.
BRANDSThe selection of brands includes Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2012 ranking for the Luxury vertical: Louis Vuitton, Gucci,
Hermès, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Burberry, Prada and Ralph Lauren.
COUNTRIESThe framework of this benchmark includes the top ten European countries in terms of internet population, and represents
77% of the total European internet users: Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Poland, The
Netherlands and Ukraine.
NETWORKSiCrossing analyzed the performance of each brand on the three leading networks by the number of users: Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube; the fastest growing and most influential ones in fashion: Instagram and Pinterest; and finally, the biggest
network in Eastern Europe: Vkontakte.
OVERALL RESULTSiCrossing found that there was no relation between the performance of the analyzed brands on the Connectedness Index and
their rank on the Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2012 ranking. In fact, none of the top three brands in the Interbrand ranking
— Louis Vuitton (1), Gucci (2) and Hermès (3) — are among the top three positions in the Connected Brand Index.
DETAILED ANALYSIS
ConnectedBrand Rank
InterbrandRank 2012 Brand Visible Useful Usable Desirable Engaged Overall
Score
1 6 Burberry 5.21 6.82 6.29 6.48 7.06 6.37
2 8 Ralph Lauren 4.34 6.58 6.71 7.90 4.15 5.94
3 5 Tiffany & Co. 3.34 7.15 5.90 9.19 3.64 5.85
4 2 Gucci 5.56 7.66 3.38 6.38 3.07 5.21
5 1 Louis Vuitton 4.41 5.84 3.86 6.14 4.79 5.01
6 7 Prada 3.67 6.18 4.14 5.62 0.98 4.12
7 4 Cartier 2.93 6.77 2.38 4.10 1.99 3.63
8 3 Hermès 4.34 6.73 2.29 3.71 0.77 3.57
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
VISIBLEThe visible score gives an idea of how present a brand is in the digital world, and how easily users can find it on the social
media networks and through search engines. iCrossing analyzed onsite parameters such as the Google Page Rank, quantity
of backlinks or coverage of local languages in connection with the website of each brand, as well as offsite data that includes
their presence in social media networks, organic and paid search, etc.
The top performers in this category are Gucci (5.56) and Burberry (5.21), thanks, in part, to the high coverage of local languages
and the wide presence that they have on most of the social networks.
iCrossing found out that all of the brands have an English, French and Spanish version of their websites, especially Gucci and
Burberry, which are the brands that cover the highest number of markets (8/10). There are only three brands offering a Russian
version of their global sites, and Ralph Lauren is the only one that has an official Vkontakte.com account. The rest of the brands
are not officially active on this network, undervaluing its potential to connect with users and potential clients in Eastern Europe.
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
10
9
8
7
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5
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1
0
Average
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
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1
0
Average
On the overall scores we find three high performing brands — Burberry (6.37), Ralph Lauren (5.94) and Tiffany & Co. (5.85) —
that rank around one point above the average (4.96), followed by two brands that rank near it — Gucci (5.21) and Louis Vuitton
(5.01). There are three latecomers that occupy the lowest positions in the rankings, all of them scoring below the average —
Prada (4.12), Cartier (3.63) and Hermès (3.57).
Connected Brands Index: Overall Score
Connected Brands Index: Visible Score
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
USEFULiCrossing analyzed how useful each brand is against two main user types: the first wants to navigate and get to know more about
the brand, its new collections, or to find a retail store. The second user wants to shop online and navigate through the online
shop of the brand to find out more about the new products, materials and colours; to view images; and to buy the product online.
Useful is the category in which the analyzed brands had their best scores, due to the rich user experience that most of them
offer on their websites and the detailed information of each collection that they display. The top performers in this category are
Gucci (7.66), Tiffany & Co. (7.15) and Burberry (6.82).
Louis Vuitton was penalised on this subcategory due to the low performance of their online shop, which lacks important
information at the product page such as availability or shipping costs of the products.
All the analyzed brands present their product collections with high quality images, but there is plenty of potential to improve the
‘luxury’ experience, by offering a personal online shopping advisor, for example, which was a feature not found for any of the brands.
USABLEIn this category, iCrossing evaluates how good the usability of a brand’s website is: from a user-friendly design of the navigation
menu, to the presence of a search field to find products or information in the website faster and easier.
There are three brands in this category that scored higher than average (4.37) on the usability test — Ralph Lauren (6.71),
Burberry (6.29) and Tiffany & Co. (5.90). There is a second group of brands — Prada (4.14), Louis Vuitton (3.86) and Gucci (3.38)
— that do not reach the average line due to common problems, such as bad structure of the navigation menu, buttons and links
not being prominently displayed and shapes and colours of the design that cause the user to get lost.
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
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Average
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
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2
1
0
Average
Connected Brands Index: Useful Score
Connected Brands Index: Useable Score
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
Ralph Lauren is the best contender (6.71) and reflects the best practices of a user-friendly design on its website and especially
in the online shop, where there is an above average optimization of the eCommerce platform, and the users have all the
necessary information at a glance.
DESIRABLEThe desirable score reflects how well a brand is positioned across all channels, from the website to the social media accounts.
iCrossing evaluated the consistency of a brand and the way it facilitates a dialogue with the users through the design, logos,
message, images and layout.
Most of the brands — with the exception of Cartier (4.10) and Hermès (3.71) — obtained a score of above 5.00. They offer an
attractive design in most of the channels in which they are present, although some of them are lacking in consistency; on the
name of the account and design of the logo and background, for example.
iCrossing noticed that only Tiffany & Co. (9.19), Ralph Lauren (7.90) and Burberry (6.48), the best performing brands in this
category, were using the same logo and design for all the social media accounts and websites. The rest of the brands failed on
this part of the scoring, as there were several different logos and account names among the selected accounts — Hermès has
four different logo designs in five of the analyzed networks, and mixes the names ‘Hermès’ and ‘Hermès Paris’ in the account
name of the social media accounts.
Use of the same names, logos and background designs are basic points that require little effort from the digital marketing
manager and strongly influence the identification of the official channel of a brand from other ‘unofficial’ accounts, groups and
channels.
ENGAGEDThe last part of the analysis focussed on how each brand engages its audience by publishing interesting content across the
social media networks, generating conversations between their fans and the brand, and doing both things regularly.
iCrossing’s findings are in accordance with the basic principle of engaging audiences: those brands that maintain a regular
activity and publish curated content are the ones that have the highest number of fans, followers or subscribers and generate
more likes, shares and comments across all networks. With an average score of 3.31 points, this is without any doubt, the
category that offers the greatest potential for growth and where brands should dedicate more effort to improve their presence.
Burberry (7.06) is the brand with the highest score in this category due to the high fan base count that permanently engages
across all the analyzed social media networks — a fan share of 28% in Facebook, 46% in Twitter, 38% in YouTube, 35% in
Instagram and 44% in Pinterest.
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Average
Connected Brands Index: Desirable Score
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
This dominant position of Burberry could be reduced by the rest of the mid-performing brands — Louis Vuitton (4.79), Ralph
Lauren (4.15), Tiffany & Co. (3.64) and Gucci (3.07) — if they had a consistent strategy for all social media networks, instead of
having their efforts focussed solely on Facebook or Twitter, for instance. The same can be said of Cartier (1.99), Prada (0.98)
and Hermès (0.77), but added to their lack of social media presence is a shortage of regular activity and engaging content.
Burberry Ralph Lauren Tiffany & Co. Gucci Louis Vuitton Prada Cartier Hermès
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Average
Connected Brands Index: Engaged Score
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
iCrossing’s Connectedness Index brings to light some interesting findings. Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Hermès, which occupy
the top three positions on Interbrand’s 2012 ranking, have not yet adopted the best practices of digital marketing, and are
latecomers in this environment, as are Prada and Cartier which occupy the last positions in the ranking.
On the other hand, Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co., which rank number 6, 8 and 5 on Interbrand’s rank, obtained the
highest scores in the Connected Brands Index, which shows that they are aware of the influence that their online marketing
activities can have on the overall performance of their brands.
The most important handicap — with an average score of 3.31 — was found in the ‘Engaged’ category. The reason for that is
that most of the brands have focussed their activities on a reduced number of social media networks, most of them utilising
Facebook and YouTube, whereas other important platforms that concentrate on fashion savvy audiences, such as Instagram
or Pinterest¬, are not utilised, resulting in a brand’s inactivity and thus users are not engaged – resulting in less followers, likes,
shares, etc.
Most of the brands already show compelling brand positioning and present their collections with high quality media which
emphasise the value of their products in their online stores. At the same time, most of the brands are still struggling to do so by
presenting user-friendly designs that make it easier for their users to find and buy the products they are searching for.
There is a big opportunity for CMO’s to improve their brand’s digital performance and become Connected Brands by
implementing a converged media strategy that combines owned, earned and paid media activities across all channels
of digital marketing. In addition to that, especially in the luxury sector, brands should offer premium curated content to their
audiences and become publishers to best communicate the value of their collections.
CONCLUSION
STAY CONNECTEDFind out more at www.icrossing.com
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Become a fan at facebook.com/icrossing
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
iCrossing’s Connectedness Index analyzed more than 75 data points which define to what extent a brand is performing for each
of the Connectedness categories. For that, iCrossing used a standardised scorecard that evaluates each one of the selected
KPI’s from 1 to 10. For those KPI’s that cannot be given an exact score, the evaluation was done by benchmarking against the
average score, giving ten points to the brand that owned the maximum value for the analyzed data, and the rest of brands were
scored against the top performing one. All the data was collected on either 1 March 2013, or within the first week of March 2013
for the KPI’s that implicate an evolution or trend.
METHODOLOGY
VISIBLE+ Existence of company blog
+ Local languages covered
+ Domain popularity
+ Quantity of back links
+ Google Page Rank
+ SEO, SEM and Social visibility index
USEFUL+ Loading speed of the website
+ Important information available at a glance with instructions to fill in forms / search fields
+ Existence of an eCommerce platform and store locator with hotline support
+ Product page with description, HQ media, reviews, availability, shipping and payment terms
+ Breadcrumbs to orient the user and a visible shopping cart in all the main categories and subcategories
USABLE+ User-friendly design with well-structured navigation menus
+ Main categories and subcategories being differentiated and links/buttons prominently displayed
+ Consistent look of the links, different from the rest of the content
+ Locations, shapes and colours in use, helping orient the user
+ Form fields and interactive elements logically placed
DESIRABLE+ Consistent brand positioning, language, images, layout and general design in the website and across all channels and platforms
+ Facilitating and inviting dialogue between the brand and the user / customer
+ Home and product pages integrating social media links to increase sharing
ENGAGED+ Facebook: fans, fans’ growth, followers, own posts, user posts, comments, shares, likes, talking about, engagement rate
+ Twitter: tweets, followers growth, following, re-tweets, engagement rate
+ YouTube: channel views, uploaded video views, subscribers
+ Instagram: uploaded photos, followers, following
+ Pinterest: followers, boards, following, pins, likes, engagement rate
+ Official Facebook accounts (Global & Local)
+ Official Twitter accounts (Global & Local)
+ Official YouTube accounts (Global & Local)
+ Official Instagram accounts (Global & Local)
+ Official Pinterest accounts (Global & Local)
+ Official Vkontakte accounts (Global & Local)
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
APPENDIXPresence in social media networks (1 March 2013)
Brand Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Vkontakte
Ralph Lauren
Burberry x
Louis Vuitton x
Gucci x
Hermès x
Tiffany & Co. x x
Prada x x
Cartier x x
Burberry
Louis Vuitton
Gucci
Ralph Lauren
Tiffany & Co.
Prada
Cartier
HermèsLouis
VuittonGucci Ralph
LaurenBurberry Hermès Tiffany
& Co.Prada Cartier
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
Prada CartierLouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
Prada Cartier
Facebook: Fans‘ growth(1 - 8 March 2013)
Facebook: Quantity of likes(1 - 8 March 2013)
Facebook: Quantity of shares(1 - 8 March 2013)
Facebook: Share of fans(1 March 2013)
15,000
12,000
9,000
6,000
3,000
0
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
Twitter: Share of follwers(1 March 2013)
Facebook: Quantity of comments(1 - 8 March 2013)
Twitter: Quantity of retweets (1 - 8 March 2013)
Twitter: Followers growth (1 - 8 March 2013)
YouTube: Quantity of video views(1 March 2013, in Millions)
Mill
ions
YouTube: Share of subscribers (1 March 2013)
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
Prada Cartier
LouisVuitton
Gucci RalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
PradaCartier LouisVuitton
Gucci RalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
Prada Cartier
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
PradaCartier
Burberry
Gucci
Louis Vuitton
Tiffany & Co.
Ralph Lauren
Cartier
Prada, Hermès
Burberry
Louis Vuitton
Cartier
Prada
Gucci
Ralph Lauren
Tiffany & Co.
Hermès
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JUNE 2013THE CONNECTED BRANDS INDEX, GERMANY
Pinterest: Share of followers(1 March 2013)
Instagram: Quantity of uploaded photos(1 March 2013)
Pinterest: Quantity of Pins(1 March 2013)
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
Prada Cartier
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry Hermès Tiffany & Co.
PradaCartier
Burberry
Louis Vuitton
Ralph Lauren
Gucci
Hermès
Cartier
Prada, Tiffany & Co.
3,000
2,000
2,500
1,500
1,000
500
0
Instagram: Share of followers(1 March 2013)
YouTube: Quantity of channel views(1 March 2013, in Millions)
LouisVuitton
GucciRalphLauren
Burberry HermèsTiffany & Co.
PradaCartier
Burberry
Gucci
Tiffany & Co.
Louis Vuitton
Ralph Lauren
Prada
Hermès, Cartier