Hugo Boss Bests Dior for Fastest Growth on Social Media

Unmetric, the social media benchmarking company, unveiled its Luxury Fashion Report to reveal which brands are leading the runway with social media performance.

The report examines the activity of nine of the most active luxury fashion brands on social media over the past three months, from May 1 through July 30, 2012, spotlighting which brands are doing the best job at gaining new fans, keeping them updated with engaging content, and carrying on conversations via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

At the heart of Unmetric’s Luxury Fashion Report is the Unmetric Score, a unique measurement designed to give sector-wide context to social media activity. The score is a scientific blend of 24 qualitative and quantitative social media metrics, weighted and balanced to produce a single benchmarkable number.

In terms of sheer numbers, Burberry wins with 14 million connections on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, besting the nearest competitor, Lacoste, which maintains 10 million total connections.

Hugo Boss leads as the fastest growing luxury brand on Facebook, increasing its fandom by 48 percent over the three-month time period. The brand also took second in Twitter growth, with an impressive 78 percent over the same period. Dior takes the number one slot on Twitter and YouTube, with a resounding 103 percent and 28 percent growth, respectively.

But in an industry where exclusivity reigns, many luxury brands are seeing greater successes on social media by shifting their focus to engagement vs. just total number of fans. Unmetric tracks and weighs all the Likes, Comments, Shares, and Impressions that each Facebook post generates to give brands a better idea of how their content stacks up to other fashion names.

On average, a Facebook post for any generic corporation measured by Unmetric receives an engagement score of 58; the fashion sector in particular scores much better, with an average of 69. Louis Vuitton aims even higher, receiving an average engagement score of 104, followed by Dior with 97 and Burberry with 81.

As far as content on Facebook is concerned, updates about product offerings are overwhelmingly the most popular type of post on Facebook with 49 percent of posts across all brands being about products; for example, Burberry recently posted a picture of its fall season product line. The post has seen over 240,000 Likes and 23,000 Shares.
However, posts that encourage a response from fans see the highest overall engagement, with an average score of 76.

Despite competing to post the most engaging content on Facebook, luxury brands have largely muted any displays of community engagement. Only Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana let fans post on their page, and for the time period surveyed, not a single company publicly replied.

On Facebook, an average fan is single, between the ages of 21 and 30. Lacoste and Dolce & Gabbana, however, are more popular amongst fans under 21. Looking at a gender breakdown, Armani, Hugo Boss and Lacoste are the only fashion brands that host a male majority.

Success on Twitter performance means more than just raw number of followers. Gucci hasn’t seen astounding growth, yet the brand is speedy when it comes to replying to followers, responding to tweets in an average three and a half minutes. Burberry has fully adopted the network as a means to converse directly with followers, with 61 percent of their tweets being replies, and those replies coming in just under six minutes on an average, at that. By comparison, followers looking for a shout out from Chanel, Dior, Lacoste or Louis Vuitton shouldn’t waste their time – these brands don’t reply to any tweets.

YouTube -- the other brand channel. Unmetric looked at YouTube activity between June 1 and July 30, 2012 of these luxury fashion brands. As a whole, luxury brands struggled to attain virality on YouTube, with no video making YouTube’s list of the 200 fastest growing videos. The most successful among these is Dior, whose 53 million video views vastly overshadow Burberry’s second place showing of 15 million, and Dolce & Gabbana’s third place showing of 13 million. Dior’s command over viewership doesn’t appear to be slowing, as the brand gained over 12 million views in the past two months alone. Gucci rests at the other end of the spectrum with only 58 thousand new video views in the two-month time frame.

At the end of the day, which brands are truly dominating on social media? According to The Combined Unmetric Scores (the sum of each brand’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube score, out of a possible 300), Dior stands at the top with 211. Burberry follows with 199, and Louis Vuitton rounds out the top three with a score of 165.

Here’s a breakdown of the metrics worth noting:

Facebook May 1 - July 30, 2012

Unmetric Score
1.     Burberry – 60
2.     Louis Vuitton – 59
3.     Dior – 58
4.     Gucci – 53
5.     Lacoste – 52

Total Fans
1.     Burberry – 13,171,836
2.     Lacoste – 10,060,763
3.     Dior – 8,984,451
4.     Gucci – 8,761,163
5.     Louis Vuitton – 8,592,920

Growth
1.     Hugo Boss – 48.2%
2.     Louis Vuitton – 15.7%
3.     Dior – 14.5%
4.     Gucci – 11.6%
5.     Dolce & Gabbana – 7.2%

Highest Engagement (Calculation of Likes, Comments, Shares, and Impressions that each FB post receives)
1.     Louis Vuitton – 104
2.     Dior – 97
3.     Burberry – 81
4.     Chanel – 74
5.     Gucci – 65

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