Louis Vuitton: Grasping the Young Consumer
On June 21, Louis Vuitton’s official Weibo@ Louis Vuitton announced that the Chinese youth idol group Teens in Time(TNT) was the brand ambassador, and released an advertising film shot by them. The number of likes and retweets has exceeded 1.1 million and 800,000 respectively within three hours. As of press time, the data is still rising.
The official announcement comes just a day before the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2023 men’s show at 8:30 p.m. on June 23, which naturally aims to warm up the fashion show. Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke recently said that the brand will enter the next phase after the Paris men’s show on June 23. The traffic that the TNT could bring to a key turning point for Louis Vuitton is naturally one of the key reasons why the brand chose the group.
Capturing young consumers
The group’s debut in 2019 was created by the same acting company that produced the TFBoys. The average age of the seven members of the group is less than 19 years old, and although its fan base is more inclined toward the student group, its traffic is considerable. The official Sina Weibo followers of the group have already exceeded 10 million, and the seven members of the group have even more Weibo followers than the collective organization, of which Song Yaxuan has 20.1 million individual Weibo followers, and the rest of the members have 14 million to 20 million respectively. In Louis Vuitton’s official microblogging over 20,000 + comments, almost by the fans of TNT “occupied”.
In December 2021, Louis Vuitton invited the Times Boys to start going to Shenzhen to watch the brand’s theme exhibition.
On March 31 this year, Louis Vuitton’s official microblog also released a set of advertising films shot by the TNT for its LV VOLT jewelry collection. The two collaborations paved the way for today’s fresh appointment.
Reasons for choosing
While almost all luxury brands are tightening their partnerships with celebrity spokespersons in the Chinese market, Louis Vuitton has instead accelerated its hunt for celebrity candidates. Since Louis Vuitton announced Gong Jun as its brand ambassador at the end of June last year, the actor’s Weibo super-topic has been flooded with fans’ sunshine lists. According to incomplete statistics, in just a few days, the number of fan orders shared online alone exceeded 100 orders, with a sales amount of more than 6 million yuan, showing the strong consumer power and also showing the strong influence of the “fan economy” in the Chinese market.
Now, a year after announcing the TNT as its newest brand ambassador, Louis Vuitton is bucking the trend, reflecting the brand’s unique market position and the current strategic height of the youth market and the menswear business in LV’s global reach. The menswear business is a smaller part of the brand, meaning that there is more room for growth compared to the established accessories business and the solid womenswear business, and it is easier to drive the brand’s overall social media buzz.
From the perspective of risk control, this time Louis Vuitton chose the TNT, in addition to continuing the menswear rejuvenation strategy, the group can also better spread the losses due to individual risks, and the company has stricter control over the behavior of teenagers, so there is less chance of scandals. Secondly, teenage groups have longer-acting careers and greater potential for future development, making them a more long-term investment for luxury brands. In addition, the title of brand ambassador is more pertinent and more controllable in terms of brand strategy.
From the point of view of revenue, the TNT can bring consumers to Louis Vuitton’s current menswear business, which has the most room for growth, on the one hand, and bring a group of young consumers to the brand as a whole on the other, which is an important guarantee for the growth of the brand in terms of young consumers and incremental business. Considering that the members’ traffic and influence in the private domain far exceed that of the collective organization, the commercial realizing the ability of the members’ endorsement and another cooperation status may be even more amazing.
Although the luxury brand celebrity endorsement trend has passed in China, it must be admitted that the mechanism of celebrity influence on brands still exists and works on a global scale. In the age of social media, luxury brands need celebrities as an important communication medium and consumer stimulus.
Last April, the Korean boy idol group BTS Bulletproof was appointed as Louis Vuitton’s global brand ambassador, which is further proof that the young celebrity spokesperson model, which was first proven successful in China, has been applied to the global market strategy by the luxury brand’s headquarters.
The official BTS account has 65.4 million followers on Instagram, and the nine Instagram posts related to Louis Vuitton’s appointment of the group as global ambassadors have accumulated a staggering 6.74 million likes. The Korean idol team, which has successfully established a global presence, has become the luxury brand’s latest favorite. Louis Vuitton has already tasted the sweetness after Virgil Abloh introduced a trendy aesthetic to the brand, BTS represents the youthful positioning that Louis Vuitton menswear is now establishing, and the announcement of the TNT as ambassadors in China continues this overall strategy.
I noticed this new announcement because I’m already a fan of tnt and I’ve liked them for a long time. lv’s official announcement of them as new brand ambassadors will also motivate me to buy lv products. I think the young Chinese market is something that needs to be explored by luxury brands. Grasping young consumers is the certainty that Louis Vuitton has seized in China.
