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On 9 October, Vogue Business hosted an event at the Bvlgari Hotel in Tokyo exploring the evolution of luxury marketing in Japan. Hosted in partnership with The Trade Desk, Live Board and Ogury, the event welcomed industry speakers including Bape Japan president Simone Ugolini and LVMH Japan digital director Yuki Endo. In an era where conversations are dominated by social media, the agenda focused on how brands and marketers could diversify their marketing strategies beyond online communities and take a holistic approach to advertising that includes out-of-home advertising, streaming and personalised content.
In the opening keynote session, Ugolini was interviewed by Joshua Grant, senior innovation director of advertising agency Dentsu. Having worked for the last 15 years in the region, Ugolini comes from both a venture capital and luxury background, beginning with a role at Valentino in 2005, followed by time at Armani, Kenzo and Missoni. He explained how aesthetic tastes have evolved, gravitating towards more minimalist styles, as well as the impact of Instagram to connect with customers and tell stories in new ways.
Ugolini also explained the lasting impact of the pandemic in supercharging Japan’s e-commerce market, which had previously been lagging behind other developed economies. As well as creating a more relevant market for younger shoppers, Ugolini said this development has broadened the appeal of luxury: “I think this brought in an inclusivity. The market went from exclusive to inclusive, in a way, and also from a more status-driven purchase to a more value-driven purchase.”
Japan is now firmly established as a luxury hub for global shoppers, while bridging the gaps between heritage, culture and innovation — especially in materials and textiles. Ugolini cited the rise in Michelin-starred restaurants, cutting-edge architecture and collaborations with artists — all combining to create a holistic experience economy that supports luxury lifestyles. This also meets the evolving needs of younger shoppers who prioritise experience over product.
At Bape, Ugolini referenced three conversational pillars that anchor the label’s marketing strategy: culture, which incorporates street culture, fashion and lifestyle; art, with an ongoing collaboration between artists (who create Bape-inspired works) and Art Week Tokyo; and Music, which focuses on hip hop and K-pop, as well as a partnership with Spotify. Additionally, Bape is opening a store in the city’s famed shopping district Ginza, where Harajuku brands, which were once considered to be young and edgy, now sit alongside European luxury behemoths on Chuo-dori Street, signalling a shift in Tokyo’s retail landscape.
In the next session, industry guests explored the theme of redefining tradition via the new frontiers in luxury storytelling. Guest speakers included experts from The Trade Desk, Ogury and Live Board, moderated by Henge CEO Shu Hirota. The discussion once again touched on the evolving behaviours of culture-loving consumers, as the use of data to improve targeting this cohort of shoppers creates new possibilities for luxury advertisers.
Ryo Matsumoto, director of Ogury Japan, explained how the advertising agency harnesses data to create personally targeted ads, alongside using analytics that ensure targeted messaging is relevant and well-timed, too. Ogury collects data on the interests and values of individual users to create highly effective, targeted promotions, as well as survey data from consumers based on their reactions to ads, enabling them to rapidly tweak and transform how advertising messages are crafted and delivered. The company also combines their data with performance and engagement data from advertisers such as Dentsu to discover consumer targets and predict how a campaign will perform across different personas.
Jun Sakurai, CEO of Live Board, spoke about the advancements in out-of-home advertising and programmatic buying, and how this is creating new KPIs for marketers. Big data not only allows marketing teams to develop more sophisticated segmentation, but also maps these cohorts more clearly to the most impactful locations for boosting conversion. The behaviours of these segments are shaping decisions around advertising channels more broadly. For example, the higher usage of taxis by high-income individuals makes this advertising form particularly suited to luxury buyers.
Meanwhile, Tetsuro Suzuki, director of business development at The Trade Desk, expanded on strategies for working with wider audiences, beyond the luxury consumer. He touched on emerging channels, such as connected TV and in-movie advertising, which have created a need for new advertising formats.
The omnichannel advertising company, which was established in California in 2009, is a veteran player in an otherwise nascent space. Suzuki shared how analytics can be used to extrapolate a single view of one impression unit from aggregated big data on advertising performance. This can be useful given how varied media consumption has become in recent years, with Suzuki explaining how the diversification of device usage presents a new challenge for advertisers, making it harder to follow the path to purchase for individual shoppers. Therefore, understanding the touchpoints users engage with is becoming increasingly complex, so the optimisation of each touchpoint is growing in importance. That noted, the added effort in optimising each channel is also creating an altogether better advertising infrastructure, which somewhat democratises opportunities for marketers to cut through the noise and improve personal targeting.
In the closing keynote session, LVMH’s Endo discussed the premium consumer vision for the future. She shared that LVMH has a centre of excellence that sets the digital agenda for the 27 brands it supports in Japan. At a local level, Endo believes the Japanese luxury market is relatively stable in comparison to other mature markets, and that consumers exhibit a high level of brand love, explaining that since lockdown, e-commerce as a share of total sales has weakened, but overall revenue remains resilient.
Despite these fluctuations, given that younger shoppers are primarily interacting with brands in the digital sphere, she said that certain categories are driving momentum. For example, in small leather goods, e-commerce accounts for 30 per cent of sales, which is high in comparison to other markets, indicating that the category represents an important gateway to luxury brands for young, aspirational luxury shoppers. Endo shared an anecdote of how, in the last generation, high schoolers have aimed to purchase signature accessories like a Gucci belt during the back-to-school season. Today, these shoppers now have children demanding Louis Vuitton purses, bags and even lipsticks from their parents. In this way, LVMH has successfully cultivated generational loyalty among Japanese consumers.
Endo finished by highlighting some of the distinct behaviours of local shoppers. In Europe, she explained, the primary reason shoppers use direct-to-consumer sites is to gain inspiration, while in Japan, they demand information to ensure they are educated on the brand or product, with “almost 80 per cent of luxury shoppers going to the [physical] retail shop to make their purchase”. She pointed out that, often, luxury brand websites are designed with the European shopper in mind, therefore the type of content or information available relates to the assumption that visitors are there solely for inspiration — but these behaviours don’t translate. Brands need to create e-commerce strategies that follow the natural journey of Japanese shoppers, rather than expecting the same templates to work. Sometimes, when functions are centralised out of a global head office, it can take months for advice from local teams to result in changed experiences for local users. At LVMH Japan, their priority is to champion the needs of the local shopper and ensure their voices and views are heard at HQ level.
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