Study: Victoria Beckham leads luxury fashion brands in social engagement

Brief:

Victoria Beckham, the fashion brand started by the former member of The Spice Girls, had the highest level of engagement on Instagram among its followers in a seven-week study that social media analytics firm Talkwalker shared with Mobile Marketer. Victoria Beckham's account had 8.6 million engagements among 25.1 million followers.
Gucci was the top fashion brand on Instagram with 11.4 million engagements, but the Italian fashion house also has 33.7 million followers. Louis Vuitton had 10 million engagements among 31.5 million followers, while Versace had 9.2 million engagements among 17.6 million followers and Dolce & Gabbana saw 5.3 million engagements among 20.5 million followers.
The brands fashion brands that posted most frequently during the study period were Dolce & Gabbana (163 times), Versace (131), Prada (131), Gucci (127) and Armani (109). Victoria Beckham only posted 82 times, but the engagement was bigger than rival brands.

Insight:

Victoria Beckham drew the highest engagement among fashion brands with a mix of Instagram posts that combined family, personality, product and celebrity. In addition to being an international star in her own right, she's married to retired soccer player David Beckham, one of the most recognized athletes in the world with an Instagram following of 55.6 million. Her top post during Talkwalker's study period was a picture of her helping her son, Brooklyn, getting suited up while she wore a dress from her new collection. In addition to pulling in his 11.5 million Instagram followers, the personalized post helped to give authenticity to a brand that has a witty reputation, perhaps best exemplified by Beckham's update to her appearance in the iconic "shopping bag" campaign from designer Marc Jacobs.

Talkwalker said Balenciaga was especially resourceful in its Instagram presence, drawing 4.7 million engagements among 9.8 million followers. The Paris-based brand maintained its minimalist approach to digital media — as seen in its stark-white home page — on Instagram while also showing off-beat comic images such as a stiletto heel spearing a tangerine that triggered more than 350,000 engagements. Balenciaga posted to Instagram during a narrow window of 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., a streamlined approach that suggests the brand has a highly targeted audience, per Talkwalker.

Gucci and Louis Vuitton take a broader approach intended for a global audience, including posts throughout the day, some of which featured images of celebrities. Two of Gucci's most engaging posts showed pictures of Italian actress Miriam Leone and Harry Styles, the British singer who gained fame with the boy band One Direction. Louis Vuitton's posts included American actress Emma Stone and French actress Lea Seydoux. Both brands have emphasized their social consciousness to appeal to a younger generation of fashion consumers. Louis Vuitton saw a big jump in engagements after announcing a donation for the reconstruction of the Notre Dame cathedral that was partly destroyed in a fire last month, per Talkwalker.

Talkwalker recommends that fashion marketers focus on posts that lead to the highest number of engagements, including a mix of images, carousels, video and stories. Brands need to identify who is talking about them on social media, and consider working with influencers who generate strong engagement. Talkwalker's research confirms other reports that demonstrate Instagram’s leading role in fashion marketing. The Facebook-owned platform produced 93% of total social media interactions with luxury brands, per social listening firm Digimind.

Instagram in the past year has taken steps to support marketers with transactional features that make posts shoppable. The image-sharing app last week created a special account called @shop that brings together posts from online merchants that sell products. The app in September debuted a dedicated shopping channel in its Explore tab and added it to Stories, the popular feature that strings together several images into a single post that disappears after 24 hours. In November, Instagram added a collection tab to let users save products they had tagged in Stories and posts, shoppable videos and a shop tab on business pages to showcase all the products from a single brand or merchandiser. Instagram in March rolled out a native checkout feature with 23 U.S. brands that let shoppers pay for products without leaving the app, and extended the tool to 55 creators and five publishers for testing last month.