Currently, luxury brands are experiencing high levels of growth. Yet these brands have faced more challenges then budget brands in the last few years, especially during the economic crash and subsequent austerity measures. So how are luxury brands coping with this?

Many have turned to experiential marketing and built up their online experience to ensure their new younger generation of shoppers are engaging with their brand, as well as their previous loyalty base of customers who were engaging with the likes of Dior and Prada on the main streets of Cannes and down 5th Avenue. These sites include rich editorial content and video content.

Some luxury brands have also engaged with the Internet in a new way, through the platform of online digital ‘influencers’. Bloggers and vloggers have become the new A-list celebrity- yet more relatable. To the average joe, the idea of a vlogger or a blogger holding a Gucci bag makes the idea of them purchasing the same item more achievable. Luxury brands have access to a much larger audience by gifting their items to these influencers to appear in one of their ‘hauls’ or by inviting them to a special event to be featured on their website. These brands are thus engaging with an audience that their traditional marketing may never have reached. These new age digital influencers are holding the megaphone and luxury brands are listening.

Loyalty Luxury brands are rewarding their loyal customers in a way that would not have done previously. The feeling of rewarding customers may have been common among the high street stores with store cards and mail vouchers but luxury retailers are engaging more with their most loyal and rewarding them with exclusive events, priority access to new drops and faster delivery services.

Protecting the brand. Some brands have been better at this than others, the likes of Michael Kors has become profane with customers seeing the brand on market stalls and on the arms of every individual – the brand lost its spark and was no longer a sacred symbol of success but a profane symbol of commonality.

Recently luxury brands in Europe won the right to block sales of their products online if they felt it damaged their image. An EU court ruled that Coty, the owner of brands like Calvin Klein, Covergirl and Chloe, can block its German distributor from using Amazon and other internet retailers. In both, the US and Europe luxury brands are fighting hard not to be associated with Amazon.

In an era where millennials have experienced both boom and bust and luxury brands are fighting hard for attention and winning.