In the post-epidemic era, the luxury industry is facing many changes and challenges. The slowdown in global business growth has forced luxury groups to start exploring new directions. In July, Cartier’s Trinity 100 themed exhibition landed its first stop globally at the West Bund Art Center in Shanghai, communicating the brand culture to consumers through the medium of art, and attracted more attention due to the recovery of offline activities.In order to get closer to young consumers, Hermès opened its 36th store in the United States in Princeton University Town to respond to the changing consumption trends during the epidemic.As the Sponsor of the Paris Olympics, LVMH Group gained 17 times more social media value and exposure during the Olympics than the annual average. The medals from CHAUMET and the specially customized award boxes from LV helped LVMH Group win the “Olympic social media gold medal”.
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 first half of 2024, the GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of luxury goods on Douyin surged by over 45%, highlighting Douyin’s emergence as a crucial business platform for luxury brands. However, success will depend on whether brands can leverage Douyin’s opportunities and effectively address these challenges.
‘OPUGC’ Unlocks New Horizons for Luxury Marketing
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 users who love fashion actively share their attitudes, express their needs, and generate consumption behaviors on the Douyin platform, all of which are captured keenly and accurately by Douyin. Douyin’s unique “decentralized” content ecology allows Douyin GEN Z creators to become deep co-builders of popular trends without realizing it, successfully concretizing abstract fashion concepts and fashion elements into the popular styles of the new season, and then combining them with rich original high-quality content from experts to create a “trend style” and attract more GEN Z generation to “get into the game”.
This year, Douyin’s innovative “OPUGC” (Occupationally Generated Content (OGC) – Professional Generated Content (PGC) – User Generated Content (UGC) ) interaction model has introduced new opportunities for luxury brands in content marketing. It deepens connections with users and transforms into an impactful marketing scene for luxury brands. Unlike traditional integrated marketing strategies, the “OPUGC” content integration approach focuses on content, enhancing its value through impact, coverage, and authenticity to drive consumer engagement and brand conversion.
At Dior Fashion Week, the “DOU Content Lab (DOU来内容实验室)” segment “DOU Fashion Show (DOU来看秀)” marked its international collaboration debut with the brand by providing live-streaming technical support. It delivered a fashion show experience that consumers could fully immerse themselves in, from the opening of the show to backstage and guest interviews, all from the comfort of their homes. This format showcased and interpreted the inspiration behind the brand’s new season designs in a diverse manner. The panoramic online and offline show format allowed more consumers to experience the allure of fashion up close, enhancing the brand’s global influence.
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.
By reimagining brand content and social scenarios, luxury brands are building and reshaping their marketing environments.
Helping Brands Precisely Identify Their Ideal Audience
Douyin’s super-detailed tag insight system includes more than 2.3 million refined tags such as crowd/product/content/touchpoint/industry dimensions. Through more scientific tagging logic and more refined crowd circle anchoring, brands can find the consumer groups they want. For example, through content insights, Douyin successfully customized communication strategies for brands in different circles such as subculture fashion crowd/high-knowledge overseas students/overseas tourists, allowing brands to communicate with target audiences more effectively and improve communication efficiency.
The next step after identifying ideal audiences is to retain consumers. According to industry data, GENZ (born between 1995 and 2009) is expected to contribute 100% of the incremental growth in China’s luxury market. They are undoubtedly the target audience that luxury brands are eager to retain. GENZ consumers have rapidly changing behavioural habits and preferences, and they demand higher content quality during fragmented time periods. This necessitates luxury brands to engage them with continuously innovative content formats.
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.
From Data Integration to Scientific Measurement
In addition to audience insights and content marketing, the synergy between Douyin e-commerce and Douyin Local Services—both online and offline—has brought new omnichannel business opportunities for luxury brands. Additionally, Ocean Engine offers key scientific tools for verifying omnichannel marketing effectiveness through a holistic approach, helping luxury brands seize new opportunities.
With CRM integration, brands can drive fresh traffic by attracting new offline members through online channels. Seamless integration of the product pipeline allows the brand to achieve a full cycle from user targeting and precise guided interactions to driving store traffic. This creates a comprehensive luxury shopping experience for consumers, offering everything from new product delivery and physical displays to appointment services, while exploring more business opportunities across both online and offline.
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.
Conclusion
Focusing on cutting-edge trends in the luxury goods industry and future growth opportunities, the Douyin platform leverages its robust content marketing capabilities and comprehensive data technology to continuously optimize its marketing ecosystem and tools. It is committed to enhancing the creation, incubation, and development of high-quality content and working with brands to explore new solutions for marketing challenges.
