Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupé driving along a country road. Image credit: Mercedes
Fashion houses Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada are leading the way as the top luxury brands in engagement on social media, but an automaker has them all beat, according to Origami Logic. The new report reveals that more activity from a brand on social media does not equate to more engagement. For instance, high-end video equipment retailer B&H Photo Video has the highest amount of social activity, but ranked at 137 in the list of most engagement. “Activity, by itself, does not result in engagement,” said Perry Mizota, head of communications at Origami Logic, Mountain View, CA. “The brand with the most activity out of the 305 brands we tracked, B&H Photo Video, only ranked 137th in total engagement. “It pushed out 4,753 tweets in the first half of 2017 - and 5,252 messages overall - but the tweets did not get much engagement,” he said. “Ultimately, content that resonates with a brand's audience is what matters, and luxury brands, in general, do a good job of creating strong content. “It is why luxury brands held eight out of the top 25 spots in terms of total engagement.” Origami Logic looked at 305 brands’ social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for this report in the first half of 2017. The analyst scored each brand based on the likes and shares they have received. Social media engagement There is a significant difference in social media engagement amongst luxury brands. Not all have the wherewithal to garner significant attention. For instance, Chanel has a very high level of follower activity and interaction with the brand. The fashion label’s videos each typically have hundreds of thousands of views and a 110,000 on Orjgami Logic’s engagement score per post on Instagram.
However, Yves Saint Laurent only receives an engagement score of more than 11,000 per post. Compared to Chanel’s significant results, this is surprising. Chanel is also highly efficient with Facebook sharing. The label saw the highest average engagement score on Facebook and scored 50,516 for each of its 111 posts. Mercedes-Benz’s Instagram, which focuses on sharing attractive photos of its vehicles, led the brand to its ranking as the highest score on the engagement rankings. The automaker scored 153,705,401, beating out BMW by more than 40,000,000 points. However, BMW did receive more engagement per post compared to Mercedes.
The average engagement score for the luxury brands that Origami tracked was 20,524,949. Additional insight While video marketing continues to thrive on YouTube and Facebook, Instagram has emerged as a surprisingly strong platform for film-based consumer engagement. Facebook and YouTube both routinely see more brand engagement in general, but according to recent findings from L2, Instagram actually outperforms both when it comes to video views between customers and brands. Luxury brands in particular can use this information to their advantage and plan their video budgets around the highly engaged Instagram audience (see more). However, even though messaging has become so prolific in consumer behavior, luxury brands are either lacking or severely absent from the strategy. Facebook Messenger is the clear winning platform for B2C communication capability, causing 81 percent of brands to have a presence on the application, according to L2’s Social Platforms; Messaging Insight Report. However, only 50 percent of brands reply to consumers within the hour and only 10 percent have chatbots (see more). “A big surprise is the difference in engagement levels among luxury brands,” Origami Logic's Mr. Mizota said. “On one hand, you have Chanel, which generates a lot of activity for each Instagram post it makes. “During the first half of 2017, each Chanel Instagram post averaged an engagement score of more than 110,000,” he said. “And its Instagram videos are typically viewed hundreds of thousands of times. “On the other hand, there is Yves Saint Laurent, which averaged an engagement score of only a little more than 11,000 for each of their Instagram posts.”