“I’ve been attracted and I’ve fallen in love with it.” For GEN Z, crush on a luxury brand is just a matter of watching Douyin.
The “business challenges” faced by global luxury brands have intensified, becoming a widely recognized issue in recent years. According to the 2024 “Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study” jointly released by Bain & Company and the Italian luxury goods manufacturers’ industry association, Altagamma, the global luxury market is projected to decline by 1% to 3% in the first quarter of 2024. Most regional markets are experiencing a slowdown in growth, prompting major luxury brands to adjust their business strategies by raising prices, exploring new opportunities, and transforming their approaches. The industry is at a pivotal point of divergent development.
With over 600 million DAU, Douyin has the largest user base, especially the GEN Z generation with strong personal opinions, which is the mainstay of the rapidly growing luxury consumption market, making Douyin a gathering place and birthplace of events with huge traffic. In addition, with its powerful content ecology and online and offline content linkage, Douyin easily captures the attention of young people. A large number of users, especially GEN Z, gather on Douyin, making it an important marketing platform in the exploration of luxury goods. Last year, the entire luxury industry’s marketing share on Douyin increased by 35% year-on-year.
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.
In 2024, Ocean Engine Yun Tu offered more than 2.3 million audience profiles. Building on the foundation of targeting core, potential, and interest-based luxury users, it enables precise segmentation of audiences in various scenarios, helping luxury brands swiftly target their ideal customer base and achieve efficient communication and conversion.
For example, in scenario-based segmentation, three refined audience groups gaining significant attention are subcultural enthusiasts, highly educated international students, and overseas travellers. These groups combine subcultures with mainstream styles to challenge conventions and play a key role in advancing freedom and diversity in fashion’s gender expression. They hail from economically advantaged backgrounds, often with international education, and seek a high-quality lifestyle. Additionally, their passion for overseas travel and curiosity about new cultures frequently lead them to make luxury purchases during their upscale travel experiences.
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.
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.
Secondly, with the help of platform IPs such as “DOU Lab”, professional teams that understand platform users better can combine with brand influence to customize high-quality content that is more suitable for dissemination on Douyin. For example, the Chinese women’s football blockbuster co-created by PRADA and “DOU Lab” has a total exposure of over 240 million on the entire network.
The question that luxury brands have always been concerned about is, “How is the effect of my current wave of delivery?”, “What kind of content does my ‘TA’ like?”, rational and emotional marketing result measurement, how to measure the accumulated brand value of marketing actions? Douyin Yuntu system can take into account both short-term and long-term measurement and track long-term brand power.At the same time, the new linkage of brand-owned groups and the efficiency tracking of third-party platforms will highlight Douyin’s ability to help brands achieve precision marketing.
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.
Refactoring the value of social scenarios and upgrading diverse user experiences. With the help of Douyin, will the luxury industry usher in a new era? We’ll wait and see.
