SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: THE ABSOLUTE CHANEL

While Bobbi Brown posts everything from sailing to holiday shopping, Chanel remains Chanel-centric. While Bobbi engages directly with consumers on Twitter, Chanel does the exact opposite by not following anyone on Twitter.

This sends a huge message about the level of exclusivity the brand hopes to convey. For all its popularity, there is nothing populist about Chanel’s social presence. It’s worth nothing that while Bobbi presents her products primarily through visuals of the products themselves, Chanel gives its audience photos of beauty products on a model.

This is a notable distinction: the visualization stage of the buying process versus the fulfillment stage.
For Chanel, representing the fulfillment stage works well; large photos showing makeup on a (usually famous) face regularly receive over 100,000 likes on Chanel’s Instagram feed. Chanel’s blog, “Chanel News,” is an extension of the tactics that make the other parts of its web presence successful. Chanel News reads like the New York Times Style section.

The Chanel's blog

It’s strictly promotional in nature, and details the various events (most of which are black-tie), that the company hosts globally: who was there, where it was held, and all the elegant details.

Posts profile art openings, fashion shows, and product launches. Where Bobbi Brown wants to meet the consumer in her everyday life, Chanel creates an aspirational air of elite aloofness.

Chanel’s blog content also features separate pages for Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, as well as fashion shows, collections, celebrities in Chanel, and Coco Chanel herself. Chanel’s use of multimedia on its blog is innovative, featuring tracks from fashion shows and concerts, as well as video footage of runway shows and “making of” featurettes. 

Since 47 percent of internet users share videos from web sources via social media, creating video assets and sharing them as blog posts can help drive traffic back to your site. A great overall mix of content can help reach viewers with different preferences, and Chanel’s blog succeeds in variety. 

The design of the blog contributes to the aspirational branding. 

It is minimalistic and clean, and some of its major design assets include large close-ups of products and events as well as high-quality stills from videos. The layout matches the elegance Chanel is known for, containing a single scrolling column and a small amount of text. 

An added benefit of large, high-quality images is that they translate well to mobile devices. In a world where 63 percent of American adults use their mobile devices to access the web, this is an important factor to keep in mind when planning blog content mix and design.

Similar to other beauty brand channels, Chanel uploads makeup looks and tutorials into a playlist for all-things beauty. However, since Chanel’s product range expands outside the realm of beauty, makeup is only a small piece to Chanel’s channel. 

Chanel's Youtube playlist

To highlight their makeup, the brand promotes their artistic direction and sophisticated brand identity, as well as the history behind the iconic fashion house. By presenting their makeup collection alongside evidence of their brand heritage, and using the same famous faces who model Chanel’s couture range, their beauty range communicates high value and prestige – despite being a small fraction of the cost of the brand’s core product line.