Why Jimmy Choo is using experiences to help reach luxury shoppers
Luxury shoe brand Jimmy Choo is creating experiences to reach luxury consumers and allow them to buy into the brand’s lifestyle.
It’s no secret that the luxury industry is going through a period of unprecedented change, with shoppers increasingly searching for immersive brand experiences, particularly the millennial cohort with their fickle attitude to loyalty. To this end,the British fashion house has been increasingly crafting unique experiences, whether that be instore, online or via social media activations, all based on storytelling to communicate Jimmy Choo’s proposition.
Take the brand’s recent Jimmy Choo #cr16 campaign; centred on the idea of sunlight to moonlight, the brand collaborated with luxury snow boot brand Moon Boot, for a retail experience, while for its digitally activation Jimmy Choo flew out opinion leaders and fashion influencers from around the world to Zermatt in Switzerland for an editorial photoshoot with them wearing the collection.
Jimmy Choo also sponsored a winter weekend in Gstaad, Switzerland for high profile fashion and cultural influencers to post across their social channels.
“It’s those kind of things that help to animate a sense of storytelling around a collection and then of course we play out those assets across all of our owned and earned channels,” Jimmy Choo’s senior vice president of global brand marketing and communications Dana Gers told The Drum.
“When you are talking about a brand you are always talking about an experience. People aren’t just buying products they are buying the values that the brand represents, they are buying the quality that it represents, the culture that it represents.
“A brand like Jimmy Choo has an inherent value to it that goes beyond just luxury leather accessories. It represents a sense of glamour, a sense of confidence… In the end we try to convey those attitudes throughout the entire experience whether it’s through our communications, or through our story experience or through our digital and online and that’s an inherent part of how we communicate.”
Jimmy Choo’s emphasis on storytelling and people is also helping the brand overcome the challenge of reaching both millennials and its more established consumers at the same time, which have different expectations and demands from the luxury sector.
“One of the challenges is that we are reaching some of our more established customers one way and we are reaching millennials in another way. There is plenty of crossover in between [the two groups] but they [millennials] are not incredibly brand loyal and they shift allegiances quite readily. The challenge for a brand is to confidently find ways to delight and seduce new customers. It’s also a clientele that requires constant communication and it creates a real demand for content all of the time.”