How luxury brands should engage on Instagram and Snapchat

What do David Yurman and the George Washington Bridge in New York have in common? The answer: nothing. Except that there is a giant David Yurman billboard oozing luxury as you drive by the bridge.

Luxury brands need to market to people where they are and inspire desire on the go.

Driver of traffic

Millennials and Gen X-ers are obsessed with mobile devices and become dysfunctional without connectivity. I can say that because I am one of them.

It is projected by eMarketer that in 2016 more than a third of mobile phone users will log on to Instagram at least once a month, and that by 2017 more than half of social network users will use Instagram.

The number of users over the next four years could be more than 100 million. By then, almost two-thirds of all millennials will be using Instagram.

Instagram has become a leader, especially for luxury marketing, with new content to engage brand fans.

Mercedes-Benz’s “Build your GLA” Instagram campaign is an example of a big success story for luxury.

Mercedes wanted to reach a younger audience with its new entry-level offering, the GLA. For car companies, an important engagement and sales tool is the car configurator on their Web site. So how do you translate this tool into a more social experience?

Mercedes created more than 280 Instagram accounts to lead people through a choose-your-adventure-type format.

Users start on the Mercedes-Benz main Instagram, and then are led to a tagged account with the color options as individual photos. They choose the photo with the color they like. Then it leads them to another detail or option to select. The automaker’s easy-to-navigate system allows up to 132 possible unique configurations.

According to Mark Aikman, department manager for digital marketing and CRM at Mercedes-Benz USA, there are 25,000 more followers on the Mercedes-Benz USA handle. This is a 540 percent increase in brand interest, as measured by traffic to Mercedes’ site.

So what about Snapchat: where does it fit into this luxury picture?

Get the picture?

The growth of Snapchat’s mobile video traffic is a force to be reckoned with.

Read rest of the article at: Mobile Commerce Daily