Their focus on glamour and aspiration makes luxury brands a natural fit for social media. For a while, it was enough to show off products and launches, with high production values, celebrity tie-ins and lush storytelling offering glimpses of an exclusive lifestyle.
But times are changing. On one hand, many luxury sectors, including cars and clothing, are experiencing a slowdown. On the other, the continued rise of Gen Z as tastemakers and consumers who may spend more on luxury goods than any generation before them is changing the game and offering new opportunities. Micro-influencers continue to make inroads, alongside strategic partnerships, interactive campaign features and campaigns that aim to shock or surprise.
How can luxury brands modernise and remain relevant to new audiences without compromising their traditional image and style? Here, we look at how three brands have tackled that challenge in different ways, from chaotic content to untraceable songs and educational storytelling.
Luxury auto brand Lincoln was also looking to broaden its customer base with a surprising new campaign. The company’s cars mostly appeal to over-55s, but it wanted to change that – and to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded compact SUV market – with the Nautilus.
The result was a campaign based on a song whose details Nautilus kept a mystery. The ad shows a woman driving through a sleek empty cityscape. Visually, the ad was appealing enough, but what made it unique was the soundtrack – a dreamy piece of up-tempo electro-pop with hard-to-decipher lyrics and no digital footprint.
With no artist, name or credit online, most listeners who tried Shazaming or Googling the track just looped back to the video itself.
Lincoln hoped that the mystery would set younger consumers – who have become accustomed to information being only a few clicks away – tingling with curiosity. “Literally checking back every day,” read one comment, “till someone finds out the name of this song.” Over the weeks that followed, online theories and Reddit threads showed tension building.
Finally, Lincoln capitalised by dropping the song on streaming platforms and YouTube and sharing social content that included a video starring long-time brand ambassador Serena Williams, who herself pulls in a younger and often female-dominated audience.
The song gathered over 125,000 streams, while the Serena Williams collaboration gained five million organic views. Site traffic tripled and sales rose 146%. That aim of opening up a new demographic? The average buying age dropped by six years – an important shift for a car brand that once had the oldest buyers in the US.
Prior to autumn 2023, high-end fashion label Marc Jacobs had no TikTok presence at all. Beginning in late August that year, however, the fashion brand began to pump out an anarchic series of videos, many of them in partnership with viral TikTok creators.
Access the brand’s feed and you might see a basement punk rock band clad in Marc Jacobs’ togs or content creator Slopsta revealing what he claims is the account’s password. ‘Sylvanian Drama‘ featured plot lines in which the miniature toys fought, battled addiction, and endured disastrous haircuts while promoting high-end handbags.
By contrast, the company’s Instagram feed features a more traditional parade of celebrities toting jackets and bags (though with the odd humorous post, such as this one proclaiming that Aries have “delusions of grandeur”). TikTok, however, is known to prize less polished, more outlandish content – and Marc Jacobs’ out-there TikTok feed thrives because it is unexpected, says Paul Hewitt, executive creative director at social agency The Lot:
“There’s something so beautifully unhinged in that lux being born out of these two opposites – a massive contradiction. You’ve got these luxury items being sold in the most unexpected way. It’s so attention-grabbing and it just sells the vibe and I want it.”
Marc Jacobs’ TikTok feed has not abandoned big names – Cardi B and other stars are front and centre – and the brand’s strategy balances creator videos with founder content, such as Jacobs himself blowing up into a balloon before fizzing towards the ceiling. The mix transformed the brand’s TikTok presence, with the 165 videos posted during 2024 averaging 1.5M views each, with an engagement rate of 9.7%.
The brand’s free-wheeling approach to TikTok carries risks as well as rewards. Robert Rizzolo, then-chief merchandising officer at Marc Jacobs, told attendees at Fashinnovation Worldwide Talks in 2024 that a bag went viral on TikTok without the brand having enough inventory to support it. “These authentic approaches [to promotion] can have financial implications to the brand, because if you’re not in alignment with what is … connecting with the consumer, then you’re in chase mode,” he admitted.
However, TikTok has also proven to be an invaluable source of real-time customer insight as the brand monitors comments and likes to learn what consumers want to see from product lines. “We’ve never had real-time data from the consumer on new arrivals [before],” Rizzolo said.
Embracing Gen Z’s ‘unserious’ vibe isn’t for every brand. Marc Jacobs, which trumpets its “playful defiance” and “fearless self-expression”, has more leeway than its rivals to be unconventional, and has calculated that the reward is worth the occasional risk.
Luxury brand marketers should consider how their desired approach gels with brand voice and guidelines, and find the right platform for it: the difference in approach between Marc Jacobs’ Instagram and TikTok presences shows that the brand understands how to find the right time, right place, and right audience.
Arresting TikTok videos and mysterious earworms are some inventive ways brands can gain traction with new audiences on social media. But edginess won’t work for every company.
The Luxury Collection, part of the JW Marriott group, has a history reaching back to 1906 Venice and runs high-end hotels around the world. Staff at its 120 hotels in 35 countries include a Bedouin horse trainer and the concierge and archivist who helped inspire Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
The brand had shared similar stories on a smaller scale in previous campaigns, but in 2024 the Luxury Collection wanted to drive high-value engagements by leaning in to the growing social trend for “edutainment”, grouping its content into concepts that would appeal to its audience, who it defined as “explorers” and “collectors”.
Posts were divided into these content franchises:
The mixed reality feature aside, the campaign primarily relied on a great sweep of content based on talent and stories the brand already possessed. Offered in a range of different formats across Instagram that were tailored to different interests, they positioned the Luxury Collection as a brand that could help consumers looking for authentic and aspirational experiences – and a hotel chain they could trust – in specific destinations.
The results saw key metrics rise year on year:
The campaign also drove bookings, bringing in $11.7 million in attributable revenue from bookings made after viewings, and a brand lift study showed that awareness had increased by 5.8 percentage points—2.8x above the benchmark.
For luxury brands that want to resonate with new audiences on social media, there are plenty of opportunities. The key is striking the right note for the desired audience in the right context.
For brands that are more playful in their tone, like Marc Jacobs, leaning into this can grab consumers’ attention and unlock new audiences. The fashion label’s engagingly random approach was perfect for TikTok, but other brands might find that this platform is not for them, or may choose to present a different facet of the brand on each social network.
Either way, the case of Marc Jacobs shows that taking your time arriving on a platform doesn’t need to be a deal-breaker – if anything, it can help you make a bigger splash on arrival.
While some brands may be wary of tarnishing their carefully-built mystique in the buzzy, trend-driven environment of social media, The Luxury Connection’s success shows how classic, authoritative content can resonate when carried out in the right way. The material played to the brand’s strengths and was grouped and curated in a way that let it be consumed more easily by specific audiences.
Meanwhile, Lincoln’s earworm campaign shows how mystique can play to a brand’s advantage: it succeeded in engaging millennials with the puzzle of the unknown melody and then capitalised on the interest with a well-executed follow-up.
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