The “business challenges” faced by global luxury brands have intensified, becoming a widely recognized issue in recent years. Amid this pressure, luxury brands face three major marketing challenges: How can they accurately identify the target audience and gain precise insights into their needs? How to effectively communicate with consumers and initiate connections quickly? How can they assess the effectiveness of online and offline omnichannel marketing? Opportunities are often present after challenges.
In the initial six months of 2024, the GMV for luxury products on Douyin skyrocketed by more than 45%, emphasizing the platform’s growing importance as a vital commerce channel for luxury trademarks. Nevertheless, the ability to capitalize on Douyin’s prospects and competently confront these obstacles will be the determining factor for their success.
To help luxury brands resolving the stalemate, Ocean Engine hosted the “Spark Creativity, Endless Exploration—2024 Douyin Luxury Industry Summit” on August 20th. The summit showcased Douyin’s comprehensive solutions for luxury brands, covering aspects from precise audience targeting and scientific content production to full-chain brand metrics. These solutions are designed to help luxury brands connect with emerging consumer needs, capture new marketing trends, and accelerate the enhancement of omnichannel experiences.
For the luxury industry, it is not easy to find the right people, especially to capture the hearts of the GEN Z generation who are at the forefront of technological and cultural change. They come from different cultural circles, have distinct and constantly changing personalities, and socialize and express themselves soberly and authentically. Therefore, only with more refined labels can we better understand them.
Douyin boasts a hyper-detailed tag insight system, encompassing over 2.3 million sophisticated tags across dimensions like audience/product/content/contact point/industry. Utilizing a more systematic tagging approach and precise audience segmentation, brands are able to pinpoint their desired consumer groups. Take content insights as an example; Douyin has crafted tailored communication strategies for brands within various circles, such as subcultural fashion aficionados/well-informed international students/global travelers. This strategic customization enhances brand engagement with their targets, significantly boosting communication effectiveness.
Based on sector statistics, the GENZ generation (those born between 1995 and 2009) is poised to account for all the additional growth in China’s luxury goods sector. They unequivocally represent the consumer group that high-end brands are keen to hold onto. Members of the GENZ demographic exhibit swiftly evolving consumption patterns and tastes, expecting top-notch content during their fragmented spans of attention. As a result, luxury marketers are compelled to interact with this demographic via perpetually fresh content styles.
Douyin is the premier platform for diverse content formats, including trending events, popular content, micro-series, short dramas, interactive creativity, and more. It also offers advanced technological tools to bridge the gap with consumers, such as precise facial recognition, upgraded AR/VR, and accurate tactile simulations. This allows brands to effectively engage and nurture their target audience, facilitating rapid connection and retention.
This year, Douyin’s trailblazing “OPUGC” model, which stands for Occupationally Generated Content (OGC), Professional Generated Content (PGC), and User Generated Content (UGC), has unlocked new avenues for luxury brands in content marketing. This model fosters a deeper bond with consumers, effectively creating a powerful marketing platform for luxury goods. Departing from conventional integrated marketing methods, the “OPUGC” strategy emphasizes content-centric initiatives, amplifying its influence through significant, far-reaching, and authentic content to boost consumer interaction and facilitate brand conversion.
Douyin has unique advantages in content creation and dissemination. First of all, Douyin’s talent ecology, as the platform’s most high-quality creator resources, provides high-stickiness content for the luxury goods industry. Data shows that 86% of consumers in China are influenced by talents. The number of talents in the luxury circle unique to Douyin has continued to grow in recent years, with more than 30+ SVIP authoritative creators in different fields, making Douyin a gathering place for creators with real artistic and cultural heritage. From the familiar fashion/art/culture/unboxing/travel and other circle talents to the more segmented exquisite boy/sweet cp/hardcore technology/makeup imitation talents, users follow the travel blogger @幻想家姜时一’s travel and exploration of the world and feel the perpetual spirit of Rolex. Douyin’s luxury circle talent matrix speaks for brand stories and values in a form that users love to watch, communicates with people in different scenarios, and demonstrates diverse marketing capabilities.
In the first quarter of 2024, GUCCI collaborated with Douyin to launch the 2024 Spring/Summer colour trend—Ancora Red. GUCCI introduced Ancora Red through official Douyin content and engaged a celebrity network to generate buzz with the hashtag #AncoraRedSpreadingThroughoutTheEntertainmentIndustry. By leveraging influencers from various fields who visited Ancora Red spaces both online and offline, the campaign sparked spontaneous interactions from the public. The #AncoraRedCelebrityCityPhotoShootChallenge continuously generated a wealth of original and derivative content, resulting in a closely integrated online and offline brand trend-setting event.
On the other hand, as a catalyst for brand marketing, Douyin’s hot spot strategy can provide the ability to predict future hot spots and create trend hot spots through the cooperation of expert content and platform-level voice. 21 billion views of spring and summer #dopamine, 14 billion views of autumn and winter #maillard, and the healing-themed “Spring is #mint mambo”, Douyin is now the birthplace of many GENZ fashion trends.
GEN Z individuals enthralled by the world of fashion engage eagerly on Douyin, sharing their perspectives and articulating their preferences, driving purchasing decisions. Douyin masterfully harnesses these expressions, thanks to its distinctive decentralized content ecosystem. This setup enables GEN Z creators on Douyin to inadvertently contribute to trend-making, crystallizing intangible fashion ideas and elements into the season’s sought-after looks. By merging these with extensive, expertly crafted content, Douyin shapes a “trendy style” that captivates more members of GEN Z, encouraging their active participation.
The integration of Douyin’s e-commerce arm and its local services platform, both in the digital and physical spheres, has created a vibrant new landscape for luxury brands to explore in the omnichannel space. This, paired with Ocean Engine’s robust suite of analytical tools, provides the crucial verification needed for luxury marketers to capitalize on emerging trends effectively.
In the face of the demand for more offline scenarios for luxury goods, Douyin has opened up through the CRM membership system, attracted new members for the brand through the online entrance, and introduced more accurate people for the business based on LBS recommendations. In 24 years, the “OPC” matrix has created a new grass-planting model. It is expected to attract offline stores through SA content, provide a one-stop service experience of new product delivery/physical display/reservation service, and complete more accurate “shopping guide” content conversion in the future.
By leveraging the synergy between online and offline capabilities, along with Ocean Engine Yun Tu’s brand image metrics framework, and integrating brand-specific audience data with efficiency tracking from third-party platforms, luxury brands on Douyin can achieve precise front-end marketing and reduce acquisition costs. They can also validate comprehensive business results across the entire chain, continuously refining marketing strategies and exploring additional omnichannel business opportunities both online and offline.
Through the reconstruction of Douyin’s brand content and social scene, luxury brands are completing the construction and remodeling of their own new marketing environments.
