This week, Macala Wright Lee of popular industry blog Mashable.com ranked LVMH’s Fashion and Art Culture Site Nowness.com site in the top position in their 2010 wrapup of the 7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry. It’s been great working with NOWNESS over the last few months on their SEO and interactive strategy, and very nice seeing them on this list. They consistently have compelling, original content, and as the article states, have always been setting the standard for fashion and art culture.
From the article:
Since consumers have been able to shop online, the most successful retailers with e-commerce have been those that set their brands apart by creating an experiential story. Those experiential stories are crafted though every communication tool – packaging and signage, highly stylized display advertising photography for print, radio and television ads that are then translated to the web, social networks and now mobile apps.
In 2010, no one did this better than Louis Vuitton and its NOWNESS. This website set the standard for the way almost any other fashion brand or retailer approached creating their own content. LVMH indirectly curated its world and the story it wanted to tell through the people who contributed to it in writing, photography and film, not directly as a brand itself. Burberry’s Art Of The Trench, Ann Taylor’s ArtSheSaid and even a fashion film available in Stella McCartney’s new iPad app are strangely reminiscent of the content style found in NOWNESS.
Ruth Staiman, a luxury marketing expert explained “The brand’s first venture into branded content came in print in the late 1990s with the City Guides — small volumes of exclusive tips for the Louis lifestyle. City Guide 2011 debuted on NOWNESS with whimsical YouTube videos touring Paris, New York City and Berlin. And the Art of Travel video on Louis Vuitton’s YouTube channel lets anyone experience the Louis Vuitton lifestyle. The channel has 50 videos, and the Art of Travel Page on Facebook has over 1,750,000 ‘Likes.’ ”
Through NOWNESS, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Louis Vuitton has created a community that shares this content 24/7 globally to support the heritage of its brand and a new frontier of influencers.
To complete the assessment of NOWNESS, Nima Abbasi, founding partner of Syndicate Media Group said, “The beauty of NOWNESS is that it doesn’t feel like branded content. It’s a mix of editorial and video with a distinct, independent point of view that you can’t get anywhere else – and that’s what consumers are craving. A good example of how luxury brands can participate in the social digital space and keep their brand cachet intact.”