The attached link runs through the most recent Luxury Lab Innovation Forum, on the state of digital within the luxury sector.

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2009/11/fashion-2-0-luxurylab-innovation-forum.html

The piece pretty much strengthens and supports much that I have written about over the last couple of years, so I won’t cover that, however there was an interesting comment by Chandler Burr at the event.
Chandler Burr is the New York Times perfume critic (what a fantastic job), basically he highlighted the fact that luxury is not about the cult of the creator but more about the individuality of the wearer/client – “It’s the difference between you wearing the perfume and the perfume wearing you.”

Now this shift in terms of what people want from their luxury brand I feel is somewhat endemic of where we are at in terms of culture. Due to the advancement of the digital age information is easy to come by and whereas in the past those that were directional and very high end had to be in the know it’s now very easy to seem informed with limited threshold barriers to information i.e. price, invites e.t.c.

By creating something that is completely bespoke or furnishing the client with as much information as possible (about the product) will provide the consumer with something to talk about, a unique experience, something that truly separates them from the pack of other very informed and uniformly directional trend setters, creating a reason to spend more on that product as it sets them apart.

Does this then highlight a potential shift in luxury products, due to the fact that luxury is being redefined? I believe so, as Chandler Burr mentions it’s about the individual wearing the product rather than following vogue and wearing what everyone else is, without being armed with the reason to why you choose that brand over another you can’t really seem that individual, informed and ultimately wearing a luxury brand for the right reason…..it’s not so great to follow anymore.

If this is the case then building a digital CRM that furnishes the customer and potential customer with as much information as possible has the potential to build the brand to luxury status? I don’t believe so; however this does highlight that luxury brands need to be in this digital space in order to maintain the brand status that they have built over the many years they have existed. Luxury brands need to offer a level of service that the individual who invests with them can only receive an exclusive club, and not someone that has just surfed the internet to find information that makes them sound informed and a luxury consumer.

Launching first online and then Blue Ray, Nike’s new SK8 film looks fantastic on my laptop.

By partnering with Adobe’s Experience Design watching on your PC/laptop does the 30 minute video absolute justice, click on the image below and check it out:

Hitwise launched analysis of Twitter this week, revealing some interesting points including one out of every 350 website visits in the U.K. comes from Twitter, that barely 5% of Twitter users go to online retail service websites from Twitter and that 93% of Twitter’s growth has been achieved over the last 6 months.

This low e-commerce referral activity, I would presume is due to the fact that most profiles linking to ecommerce sites would be the brands looking to be purchased. The only independent feedback would have to be from followers of the profile, which would mean that most independent Tweets would be positive. With the expectation of so much positive sentiment about the brand, it’s no wonder that users aren’t inspired to purchase from Twitter, but would more than likely use at some point during research.

Had a hunt around for some examples of augmented reality and the only advertiser that I found so far, that’s fit with luxury and premium is BMW’s activity for the launch of the facelift Z4.

With the likes of Mini, Toyota, Honda and BMW all venturing into augmented reality it would seem this is more than likely the way of car brochures for the future, as you can see the car from every angle and control it’s movement.

This platform definitely lends itself to fashion, with the potential buyer or consumer able to see the product at every single angle, check out the video below:
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Our client Imagine Fashion have launched their landing page designed by Giovanni Russo, it looks great.

Greg Kadel has edited the first movie on the site called “Spark Ignition”, with super heavy weights of the fashion world Gisele Bundchen, Catherine McNeil, Veronica Varekova and Ilona Novacek all featuring.

To keep up to date with everything Imagine Fashion check out the social media profiles below:
www.twitter.com/ImagineFashion
www.myspace.com/imaginefashioncom
www.facebook.com/pages/imagine-fashion/80609964181?ref=ts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWPVn6q6muo

Nice Uniqlo site running on from the the Parka site they ran in February, found myself using it and losing all sense of time.

Nice little driving game by VW. I like the fact that you are educated on the heritage of the GTI and technological advances of the new model, in a not too tedious manner, before you get the chance to get behind the wheel.

The games itself is a little different, as you’d expect from VW, it is styled very nicely. The only real criticism I would have of the game is that it doesn’t really give a true indication of the car’s ability, although in saying that I haven’t driven the new Golf GTI so potentially it might?

Still having problems uploading images, so here’s the link:
http://www.gtiproject.com/

Now usually we’d question the use of an intro within an e-commerce environment, but it would seem that Hermes can’t do much wrong on their site and this is no exception.

The intro isn’t an intro for intro sake; it educates as to the process of three of their scents and has made me consider the brand when I’m next in the market for a new cologne.

I’ve been trying to upload the image of the site all morning, but for some reason I can’t, so best if you check it out yourself, it’s definitely worth it:

Hermes.com

“A sophisticated micro-payments service” will launch this autumn said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

So it would seem that plunging ad generated revenue has forced the hand of one of the big players in publishing, to a paid for subs model. Interestingly it would seem that they are looking to adopt a model of  micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to WSJ.com, after years in publishing I would hope this isn’t translated as “all news based content free of charge, with all channel specific content and that deemed as high value paid for”. As the only attractive environments for advertisers within news sites being channel specific and premium content, this model doesn’t make for a great bed follow with an advertising business model as well.

It makes sense that news and topical editorial is free, as a driver for topical relevancy in search, but paying for the ‘good stuff’ or the ‘unique stuff’ limits the opportunity to generate revenue from advertising, as these environments are where advertisers want to be and not next to news stories highlighting topics such as economical doubt.

Anyway this is pretty much conjecture on my part, but will be interesting to see what the plan is when it comes into full effect

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Comscore have just released stats that show ad clutter to be down, 10% less display ads per page than a year ago.

Wonder if that will have an effect on CPMs? Or as I touched on yesterday will publishers start to consider a paid for subscription model again?

“Who started this rumor that all information should be free and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out? I say this in college classrooms and they start to throw their shoes at me.” Ann Moore CEO of Time Inc, with quotes like that it looks like publishers are back tracking already. Guess if publishers are considering this model, then it might create an environment for YouTube to start making some money through paid for subscriptions?