5.2 Creating luxurious relationships on Facebook
5.2.2 Online users are everyone and their grandmother
5.2.2.2 Know your audience
Facebook brand page post stating posted on the 23rd of June and the actual note stating ‘23rd June ‘12’ in Baileys handwriting. The note bears resemblance of a newsletter and thereby covers a need for information, i.e. time of the show, date and Milan time. By covering the need of information Burberry equips users to tell others about this event. One might say that this is the Facebook way of receiving a newsletter. This image might favour the media in terms of self-‐
disclosure, but the two-‐way communication is arguably simulated considering the declarative sentence structure, which one might say is a way to maintain the control of potential receiver responses. The declarative sentence structure on the other hand favours the luxury brand in terms of staying exclusive and inaccessible on an accessible media.
The luxury brand should find ways of balancing the presence on a social media site with its luxury values, in order not to become common property (Thomsen 2012) and potentially lose luxuriousness when facing social media and Facebook. Having mapped some of Facebook functions with the user needs we will move on to specifying what kind of different users luxury brands are dealing with online and potentially creates relationships with.
5.2.2.2 Know your audience
Singh et al. (2012) establish seven types of global social media users, namely the creators, the conversationalists, the critics, the collectors, the joiners, the spectators and the inactives.
Thomsen (2012) segments the users in a different way. According to Thomsen (2012) it is more about segmenting the users into stages that reflect different values to the brand. He
categorises the users into five stages. The first types of users are those who have liked the Facebook brand page and have awareness of the brand’s existence, i.e. ‘the liker’. ‘The likers’
automatically moves to the next stage as ‘the observers’. From the observer stage Thomsen (2012) says that the next step is to activate them and make them into ‘the interactive user’ who comments, likes, and shares the brand messages. We would like to point out that in order to become an interactive user they have to have ‘liked’ the Facebook brand page. The most
beneficial of ‘the interactive users’ can according to Thomsen become ‘brand ambassadors’, with who he suggests making strategic alliances by rewarding them with cash or benefits in return of good publicity and WOM. This might be a risky move according to Thomsen himself, as he states in another context that one should be careful online because everything is on the premises of the savvy users that can see through a poor strategy (Thomsen 2012). The last and most beneficial stage is when the users become ‘the user-‐generated innovation user’, i.e. the user Singh et al. (2012) call the creator, who comes up with suggestions about everything from opening hours to actual products (Thomsen 2012).
Above five stages can arguably be paired up with the three types of WOM models (Kozinets et al. 2010). ‘The liker’ could represent ‘the organic interconsumer influence model’ as a mere like of a Facebook brand page pops naturally up on ‘the likers’ own wall and his or her network’s Facebook news feed. Thus, the message is not pushed by a marketer, but is consumer to consumer. ‘The linear marketer influence model’ represents ‘the interactive users’ and especially ‘the brand ambassadors’, as they will speak in particular favour of the brand. Thus, users considered opinion leaders spread the message. The last WOM model is ‘the network co-‐
production model’, which represents ‘the user-‐generated innovation user’ and more specifically the users who are co-‐creators.
The different types reflect a different level of engagement with a brand as seen above all of them have a function. According to Thomsen ‘the likers’ hold value in the sense that a ‘liker’
has friends, i.e. the social network. The brand message will be spread to the masses and
perhaps hit a few people who will have a real value for the luxury brand (Thomsen 2012). Skjold further notes that a like has value in the sense that “… someone has taken the effort to click … And if people don’t care or they don’t feel some loyalty they will not click.” (Skjold 2012).
Though, it is worth noting, “… you have a lot more people liking luxury brands than will ever buy the luxury brand …” (Aconis 2012). Bøilerehauge defines the likes as a long-‐term marketing investment. Because in order to generate sales and promote the dream the luxury brand always has to be top-‐of-‐mind (Bøilerehauge 2012).
Bøilerehauge refers to ‘the observers’ as the passive users (Bøilerehauge 2012). They read your posts but will never give feedback in terms of a like, comment or share. For these types the purpose is arguably to create brand awareness and thus be on top-‐of-‐mind.
The step from having ‘likers’ and ‘observers’ to creating ‘interactive users’ and ‘brand ambassadors’ can pose a challenge: “A luxury brand really has to understand how do we activate these likes and how do we activate the right likes” (Aconis 2012). Thomsen states that the more the luxury brand dares to involve the users the greater value they will get for the luxury brand (Thomsen 2012). However, this may pose a challenge for luxury brands
considering the elevation, exclusivity and inaccessibility. One could argue that Thomsen and Aconis have a useful point, as they say is that it is not about the volume of likes, but the quality of likes. In order to involve the users to a higher degree and create a valuable relationship with these Thomsen states that luxury brands should start to think ‘socially’ and integrate them a step earlier and allow the users to feel ownership in the brand (Thomsen 2012).
During the luxury brand identity analysis we have seen an example of how Burberry invited the consumer ‘backstage’. The ‘backstage’ is a tool where the luxury brand seeks to educate the users in core luxury brand values by inviting the user backstage. Moreover in this way the luxury brand might cover the user need for information through self-‐disclosure while making it a move that seeks to spread the dream. Luxury brands can make the user feel smart, important or trendy by covering the need of information and thereby activate them to generate WOM (Sernovitz 2009). Thus, the challenge lies in making the users worthy brand messengers, but one should consider that users do not share something they cannot find themselves in, i.e. the need for self-‐expression. Additionally, to maintain the exclusivity when inviting the user
backstage, the luxury brand should arguably preserve some ‘distance’ (Bøilerehauge 2012) by not encouraging the user to react, e.g. keeping focus on the luxury brand and simulate dialogue by not overtly asking for the user’s opinion.
Examples of ‘interactive users’ from our four case studies’ Facebook brand page.82
The examples above show the amount of likes, shares and comments i.e. the ‘interactive users’
on four different brand page posts from our four case studies. One should keep in mind the different amount of fans on each brand page and the difference in terms of what type of post it is, e.g. a video or a product. Acne primarily uses their Facebook brand page to promote
products, e.g. clothes, magazines. What is interesting about this post from Acne is that it might reflect their type of communication, as seen in the semiotic analysis Acne is to a large extent informative and does not dialogue or simulate dialogue with users, which arguably is an answer to why they can generate 552 likes, but ‘only’ three user comments.
Thomsen (2012) believes that ‘the user-‐generated innovation user’ adds most value to a luxury brand, as it can be perceived as a direct channel to understand what the users want. However, Kapferer and Bastien (2012) seem to disagree with this type of user-‐luxury brand interaction considering the anti-‐law ‘do not pander to your customers’ wishes’. The anti-‐law states: “There
82 http://www.facebook.com/hm?fref=ts, http://www.facebook.com/acneonline?fref=ts, http://www.facebook.com/Prada?fref=ts, http://www.facebook.com/burberry?fref=ts
are two ways to go bankrupt: not listening to the client, but also listening to the client too much.” (Kapferer&Bastien 2012: 68). This speaks against actively integrating ‘the user-‐
generated innovation user’, but it does not rule out listening to the users. Instead one could assume that for luxury brands it would be more appropriate to recognise the most valuable buyers and ambassadors and when they get into the store ask these if they are on social media and what kind of experience they would find fruitful in an online setting.
To activate WOM it is fundamental to acknowledge their presence and invite them into the luxury brand universe. The two images below show how Burberry and H&M celebrate and acknowledge their Facebook fans.
Images from Burberry and H&M’s Facebook brand pages where they celebrate 10 million likes83.
Burberry made a personal thank you note in the brand page post from CCO Bailey: ‘Thank you so much for all your incredible support!!!’. The communication is arguably acknowledging the
83 http://www.facebook.com/burberry?fref=ts, http://www.facebook.com/hm?fref=ts