Posted on
5/10/2022

Five Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns in the Luxury Sector

The growing success of influencer marketing is also forcing luxury brands to rethink their communication strategies. Luxury brands have always understood how to increase their appeal exponentially through strong marketing. These five examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns in the luxury industry will help you better understand luxury brands' advertising strategies.

road signs with the names of various luxury brands
road signs with the names of various luxury brands

Key Takeaways

  • Luxury brands are increasingly turning to influencers for their marketing campaigns to reach new audiences and stay relevant.
  • Partnering with celebrities or street style icons helps luxury brands stay hip, while balancing being special with being accessible.
  • Five best practices show how global brands like Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton and smaller designers like Marine Serre are overcoming the challenges of digital communication.

Luxury Brands, Their Marketing and Their Digital Presence

Historically, there has been a close relationship between luxury brands and influence, as designer products play on the desire for status and recognition and sell the promise of uniqueness and success. With globalization and digitization, new opportunities opened up for the luxury sector through influencer marketing.

In 2018, Traackr spoke with “Les Experts du Web” president and co-founder Anthony Rochand and “Lab Luxury & Retail” founder and marketing and communications consultant for Studio Mode Paris and ISG Paris with Jérôme Monange about their take on influencer marketing by luxury brands.

Rochand says, “Brands haven’t yet reached maturity, they’re still lagging in terms of influence 2.0 but they are realizing that something is happening. As consumers become increasingly impervious to advertising, brands need to embrace new levers, such as influencer marketing. […] Influencer marketing is ultimately becoming a critical challenge for luxury brands, as it requires flawless content mastery and an overarching brand content strategy. Influencer marketing changes the rules and the way we approach marketing at a profound level.” Monange comments, “Heritage brands need to learn to lose their top-down, one-way communication style […].”

Take a look at Kolsquare’s study of luxury brand activity on social media, including TikTok and YouTube. This will give you an even better understanding of luxury brands’ communication habits on social media and what the trends were in luxury marketing in 2020.

In 2022, influencer marketing is an essential part of luxury brands’ marketing campaigns. 75% of luxury fashion and beauty brands confirm that they also benefit from the advantages of influencer marketing, such as brand visibility. Many luxury brands have now implemented successful influencer marketing campaigns, which we will take a closer look at in this article

1. Balenciaga and Kim Kardashian

Although the reality TV star has collaborated with many brands, it seems that there is a special relationship between Kim Kardashian West and Balenciaga. Through events like the Met Gala or Kanye’s Donda Listening Party and SNL, to which Kim came in Balenciaga, a close relationship has developed. After all, while the Spanish luxury brand benefits from Kim’s 260 million, Kim was able to earn her status as a fashion icon.

Image via Instagram @kimkardashian

In the industry, Kim is even called a muse for the creative director of Balenciaga, Demna Gvasalia. The results from relationships between designers and muses flourish are well known, for example the Birkin bag or Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy dress in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The partnership will be particularly successful because both Kim and Balenciaga know how to sell both high glamor and memeability in the digital. On one hand, Kim wears a diamond earring one day and Balenciaga fries shoes the other. Kim and Balenciaga skillfully used provocation to produce and channel the power of virality for themselves.

In July 2022, the American entrepreneur walked the Balenciaga runway during Paris Haute Couture week in a floor-length black dress with a heart-shaped neckline.

2. Mugler and the Alien Perfume

Stylist, fashion blogger and model Aleali May collaborated with Mugler on a new campaign for the brand’s Alien perfume. Aleali is known for her style that fuses casual streetwear with luxury, with the American being a self-confessed sneaker fanatic. The 30-year-old has previously collaborated with Nike, becoming the first woman to design a unisex Air Jordan, for example.

In the campaign, Aleali wears Mugler designed by Creative Director of Mugler Casey Cadwallader and “Alien Goddess intense,” which, according to campaigns, gives her a flaming look.

3. Marine Serre and Yugnat

French designer Marine Serre communicates with memes and it seems that she uses them to make her Instagram account the new grail of brands as a humorous platform. That’s why she also collaborated with artist Yugnat, who has circa 606K subscribers on Instagram and pokes fun at everyday situations with his equally humorous posts.

Accordingly, Yugnat created posts with images from Serre’s collections, reinterpreting them in the form of memes. This self-deprecating strategy is especially appreciated by the younger generation, some of whom are turning away from elitist luxury and expect accessible content. This idea aligns with Serre’s brand identity, as the brand is known for sustainable and engaging values.

4. Léna Situations and Vogue

For French Vogue, the Youtuber Léna started the series “Vlogue”, in which fashion is to be “decoded in all facets”. In October 2022, there are already eight episodes in which the Frenchwoman discusses various topics from the fashion industry. For example, the influencer meets brands to discuss their digital communication strategy or wonders why the sneaker industry is worth millions.

She met Dior, which was one of the first luxury brands to recognize the power of digital communication, and the designer duo Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant, behind the Coperni label. She also chats with fashion stars such as Alexa Chung, Camille Charrière and Irene Kim.

Alexa Chung notes, “I think we’d be careless if we didn’t acknowledge that social networks, especially Instagram, are a great help for many emerging designers and young talents.”

5. Louis Vuitton and Influencer Marketing

During the two Covid years in particular, the luxury industry struggled to stay relevant, but even before that, luxury brands were wrestling with digital innovations and how to position themselves on social networks.

Louis Vuitton shares behind-the-scenes glimpses of shoots, fashion shows or photo shoots with its 48.9 million subscribers* on Instagram, creating a sense of closeness with fans.

Read how brands can position themselves in the Chinese market using TikTok’s sister Douyin on the Kolsquare blog.

Going forward, luxury brands must continue to present themselves online and think about “non-luxury” consumers in addition to traditional luxury target groups. For example, GenZ is the first generation to store mainly online.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of  KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.

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