Louis Vuitton and Burberry vie for pole position in luxury brand social media rankings

By

Robin Driver

Published
Feb 21, 2018

Social media analytics firm, NetBase, released its 2018 Luxury Brands Report this Wednesday, revealing that high-end fashion labels account for half of the top ten luxury brands on social media.  

Louis Vuitton was beaten to the top spot by Land Rover but achieved a more than respectable second place, closely followed by Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana in third and fourth place, respectively. Christian Louboutin put in a commendable performance, claiming sixth place, while Yves Saint Laurent came in eighth.
 
In the fashion category, Alexander McQueen also accomplished a strong result, ranking twelfth and achieving a perfect score in the study’s “passion” ratings.

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The report analyzed over 227 million posts concerning a wide range of categories, from January 1, 2017 to January 1, 2018, and its results are based on an aggregation of the sentiment, passion, and volume of the conversation surrounding the brands mentioned.
 
In a release, Paige Leidig, NetBase chief marketing officer, said, “Luxury brands have a specific target customer who is incredibly particular about what they shop for. Emotion and reputation are huge sales drivers for brands in this space,” going on to point out, “Many luxury brands have high sentiment on social media, it is vital for CMOs and brand managers to understand how they can differentiate and drive positive consumer passion.”
 
Further down the leader board, the highest ranked beauty brands were L'Oréal (#20), Dior (#25) and Estée Lauder (#28), which also chalked up the highest scores for net sentiment across all categories.

Elsewhere, Cartier (#27), Chopard (#50) and Harry Winston (#69) dominated the jewelry category, and it was also found that 30 to 40 percent of their mentions on social media were garnered through Instagram.
 
Indeed, Instagram was found to be the biggest single source of conversation around luxury brands, and was an especially prevalent platform in the beauty, fashion and high-end spaces.

This would appear to confirm the importance of Instagram in these sectors, a fact already suggested by the findings of a recent Zine survey naming the Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform as a favorite with fashion and beauty influencers.
 
NetBase’s study has been published at a time when luxury brands are having to rethink their strategies in order to adapt to the increasing dominance of e-commerce. Yet, when it comes to high-end retailers, brick-and-mortar department stores were shown to outshine their online competitors in the social media conversation. Selfridges (#30), Harrods (#41) and Neiman Marcus (#46), for example, beat out their e-commerce counterparts to account for over half the conversation volume in the luxury retail category.

The result should not, perhaps, come as a huge surprise, as it only reaffirms the findings of a report published by the Luxury Institute at the the beginning of this year which suggested that the industry is still largely tied to traditional, physical retail spaces by a clientele that values customer service and exclusivity.
 
The full 2018 Luxury Brands Industry Report is available for download on NetBase’s website.