Social Media Engagement- on a Scale From André to Dom Pérignon

On a range from André to Dom Pérignon, the social media engagement of these two companies parallels the quality. Dom Perignon’s social engagement is as golden as their embossed labels, while André’s social engagement is a little too saccharine.

This came as a surprise to me, because top social media engagement is commonly associated with millennial customers. As a millennial, the only champagne in my budget for a celebration is André. However, Dom Perignon, whose most common customers are older, garners nearly 1,300x more engagement than the lower-end brand, André. It is well known that Instagram has moved far beyond its initial teenage audience, and is now being used as a tool to foster brand engagement for mature luxury customers. This comparison demonstrates that luxury products can successfully use social media to convey meaningful messages.

Let’s evaluate the differences between the social media strategies of André and Dom Pérignon, to see which brand bubbles to the top.

André champagne is well known for being the choice of young adults on a dime, who still crave a bubbly beverage. Though André is the #1 champagne choice for college students and young adults, their social media engagement does not represent this. On Instagram and Twitter their posts range from as little engagement as 0–20 reactions or comments on posts. Facebook shows increased success with reactions ranging between 5–100 per post. Why is this social media savvy generation not interacting with their favorite champagne brand?

Likely, this has to do with André’s promotional techniques and brand management on social media. All the photos they share on Instagram and Facebook are professionally developed content. The media includes relatable, quirky uses of their product. However, there are also irrelevant images like champagne with shoe polish and cats. On Twitter, André shares primarily organic content posted by their drinkers, supplemented with the same professional content from Instagram and Facebook. The goofy content shows that André does not take life too seriously and that the company understand’s that they sell a party champagne. Their target audience, millennials on a budget, would enjoy this content, if it was presented on their newsfeed. However, because André has such few followers, the content isn’t being seen.

André should begin to grow their social media share of voice by first trying to garner more followers. André should run a social media contest to win 50 bottles of André to host a party for the winner and their friends. Participants must like the André pages and share a post to be entered to win. The contest and posts surrounding the contest can continue to use their hashtag #EpicWithAndré. However, the imagery should stay relevant to showcase the fun, young lifestyle that can be associated with drinking André.

Dom Pérignon has always been a brand synonymous with elegance, boldness, rarity, and timelessness in the champagne industry. Their social media accounts flawlessly give off this same vibe of pure class. Dom Pérignon has a huge following on social media. They see levels of engagement ranging between 4,000–30,000 reactions and comments on every post on both Facebook and Twitter. Dom Pérignon solely posts professionally created content on their social media accounts, including luxurious photos of their champagne in the Caribbean, on yachts, and at rooftop trendy bars. These photos evoke feelings of desire in their customers, judging by the comments people leave on these posts. Their customers are publicly expressing that they crave the lifestyle pictured. The fact that Dom Pérignon only uses professional content and does not share customers photos keeps the rarity and prestige of the brand apparent.

The only con of their social media strategy is that Dom Pérignon does not have a Twitter account. Dom Pérignon should use Twitter as another place to brand themselves and as a way to increase share of voice. They should continue to only post their professional content. But on Twitter, it would be advantageous if they increased the frequency that they give direct responses to customers too.

Overall, this comparison showed that the social media success of these brands was not determined by the age of their target consumer, but by the quality of their content. There is a great range of ages and income levels that follow Dom Pérignon, which include many users and people who aspire to be users.

Either way, Dom Pérignon has clearly bubbled to the top of the champagne world with their divine taste, quality, and social media strategy.

Cheers!

Suzanne

This post was created as part of the Global Luxury Management Program at the NC State Poole School of Management. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #Luxemarketing #NCStateGLM John Andrews #SocialMedia #Luxury #Champagne #Wine Creating Dom Pérignon

Images from: https://www.instagram.com/andrechampagnes/ and https://www.instagram.com/domperignonofficial/