How Loro Piana is Winning with Content Strategy in Physical Space
FSW examines Loro Piana's "World of Wonders" Harrod's holiday takeover and considers the value of content strategy for IRL experiences.
“Luxury is research in quality. It's quality with no compromise. What does that mean? That you don't think about how much something will cost to be able to achieve the very, very best.” - Pier Luigi Loro Piana (Source: The Telegraph)
While luxury sector strategists and media pundits opine that dark clouds are gathering around luxury, the teams at Loro Piana and Harrod’s are in a world of their own. Last week, Harrod’s unveiled its annual holiday collaboration, a “Workshop of Wonders” with Italian heritage brand Loro Piana.
As we will explore, in a moment where luxury brands vitally need strategy more than ever to differentiate themselves and reach consumers, the Loro Piana 2024 “Workshop of Wonders” at Harrod’s is a case study in the execution of a narrative in-real-life (IRL) content strategy or what we at FSW prefer to call “content strategy in physical space.” Like digital content, IRL content is all about delivering the right content on the right channels to the right consumers at the right time.
IRL content strategy is more than just visual storytelling or content marketing. The idea of “content strategy in physical space” is about applying the basic principles of content strategy to brand messaging and communications in real-life contexts, including in-store advertising, pop-ups, runway shows, exhibits, galas, and events, or consumers speaking with a shopping associate at a boutique. The goal of a holistic approach to brand content is to ensure that IRL and digital content are consistent yet appropriately differentiated across touchpoints and always have a clearly defined “why” that connects brand vision to customer needs.
Defining IRL+ and Content Strategy in Physical Space
At FSW, our go-to definition of content for luxury brands is:
Content is any touchpoint where consumers encounter your brand messaging, both digital and IRL.
Following this definition, brands should think of IRL spaces like retail stores as a form of content. The same goes for all other IRL luxury spaces and experiences.
The constellation of IRL touchpoints is more extensive and richer than other retail segments. The long-term storytelling nature of luxury marketing and the businesses’ need to embed their products and services in historical or other social contexts opens up the opportunity and challenge of engaging customers across many areas.
The list of what potentially qualifies as IRL luxury content is lengthy and multifaceted and it should almost be denoted as IRL+:
Products and product materials, prominently including the clothing, accessories, and other products for luxury fashion brands, as well as labels, boxes, and packaging
Runway shows, collection presentations, and press previews, including the collections or products being showcased and affiliated brand creative
Retail stores, including signage, in-store advertising, sales associate/consumer interactions, and products on display
Events and marketing-focused activations like pop-ups, trade shows, collection launches, parties, and private galas
Print materials like magazine editorials, books, ads, marketing, and other external and internal brand information
As we will see, Loro Piana’s “Workshop of Wonders” demonstrates the art of IRL+ content strategy in practice by executing a content-centric plan intended to delight and inform consumers while offering them different ways to participate, interact, and create.
But, what does it mean to say that IRL+ spaces and experiences are a form of content that needs a specific content strategy? What principles should brands follow when thinking about content in physical contexts?
Why IRL+ Content Needs Content Strategy
We have argued at length that luxury content is unique from that of other retail products. Its idiosyncrasies require a more attenuated, tailored approach that builds value and engages current and future generations of customers with long-term storytelling.
The unique qualities can make the projection of its content in physical space especially powerful. Like digital content, IRL+ content requires a structured, strategic approach to keep brand messaging and storytelling authentic, consistent, and targeted in a way that balances brand vision with consumer needs. In other words, luxury content in real-time physical space requires content strategy as much, if not more, than content in digital environments because it is inherently dynamic and constantly evolving.
For a sector that thrives on a sense of inaccessibility and high creativity, luxury has still not quite adapted to the myriad of ways in which digital content has impacted real-time content in physical space. The rapid acceleration of digital content, e-commerce, and social media has drastically changed consumer preferences and expectations for IRL+ shopping and retail. People expect hyper-personalized, hyper-localized, and customizable exclusive experiences that satisfy a desire for immediate gratification and top-notch service.
Yet, luxury brands are failing to deliver on this content at almost every turn. According to the BCG x Altagamma True-Luxury Global Consumer Insights July 2023 study, fewer than 50% of luxury consumers are satisfied with their overall experience with 11% citing their experience as truly underwhelming. Thinking about IRL brand-consumer interactions as content, this luxury consumer dissatisfaction suggests that luxury brand strategy for IRL+ content predominantly prioritizes business needs over consumer needs, which is a death knell for consumer-facing luxury experiences.
As we have explored, luxury is not like other industries. It is part of the experience economy and is all about quality, experience, and story. Luxury works as luxury due to what Daniel Langer calls “extreme value creation”:
A better way to approach luxury with high managerial relevance is to think of luxury as the ability to create extreme value for clients. Hence, a brand has to flip the script and take the perspective of a client.
To put this in content strategy terms, luxury brands must adopt a needs-based approach to IRL+ content to truly connect with consumers correctly. In the world of UX design, a needs-based approach prioritizes consumer needs over organizational preferences and focuses on features, functionality, and content that support a good user experience and encourage discovery and findability, clearly communicating brand vision and values.
Brief Case Study: Loro Piana’s “Workshop of Wonders”
Loro Piana’s “Workshop of Wonders” at Harrod’s is a multi-channel, multi-sensory extravaganza of visual retail merchandising that shows the benefit of both long-term, brand-authentic strategy and the value-add of targeted, vision-centric content to deliver compelling storytelling, creating unique experiences in which consumers can immerse themselves regardless of channel and geography.
The magazine Wallpaper has a very thorough write-up of the Loro Piana in-person Harrod’s experience at its Brompton Road flagship. What interests us at FSW about this Loro Piana activation is the deeply narrative IRL+ strategy that leverages both the highly tactile nature of textiles—around which the Loro Piana brand story and heritage are built—and the novelty of analog experiences to create a sense of personalized wonder and discovery.
As the Wallpaper article notes, “[this] expansive festive takeover, comprising not just displays in all 36 of the store’s … windows, but two pop-ups and a ‘pop-in’... Titled the ‘Workshop of Wonders’, the takeover promises to marry the brand's own century-long history of craft … with the mood of a buzzing Santa’s workshop, complete with Nutcracker-esque marionettes, fluffy soft-toy animals and wooden toys.”
From a customer journey perspective, the Loro Piana “Workshop of Wonders” throws the marketing funnel out the window and invites consumers to dive deep into its brand provenance and craftsmanship from the outset. The 36-store window displays at Harrod’s narrate the story and global footprint of Loro Piana’s production process and the preciousness of its materials, including Mongolian cashmere and fibers. According to the Loro Piana team, “Each window [tells] the tales of the fibres, communities, and beautiful landscapes that make up the maison’s masterful chain of hands.”
Once inside Harrod’s, customers are treated with a variety of experiences, spaces, and content through which to participate in, interact with, and co-create with the Loro Piana brand. The “Door 9 Pop-Up” is set up like an artisanal workshop, encouraging consumers to explore the brand’s expertise in materials craftsmanship, including handcrafted leather and cashmere goods, many of which can be monogrammed. The “Door 6 Pop-Up” is a more traditional gifting area with luxurious stuffed animals and puppets and a crafting area that encourages customers to create their own decorations by selecting Loro Piana fabrics to wrap around an ornament or wreath. There also is a “Pop In” boutique featuring the brand’s children’s collection made of soft cotton and cashmere fabrics.
Taken as a whole, the Loro Piana “World of Wonders” forms a highly effective, memorable brand universe that delights and invites discovery at every turn. It does this through appropriately attenuated, meticulously consistent content at almost every touchpoint, from large-scale visual cues of floating cashmere clouds in the shop windows and a 55 ft tree above the entrance to the more subtle, interactive storytelling of the ornament crafting table inside.
Narrative Strategy and the Future of Luxury Brand Content
As the Loro Piana “World of Wonders” Harrod’s holiday takeover demonstrates, holistic content strategy provides a critical strategic framework, methodology, and toolkit that luxury brands can use to deliver on consumer expectations for luxury through a needs-based approach to IRL+ content, spaces, and experiences.
Successful luxury brand universe creation stems from a story-based or narrative framework combined with a robust, holistic content strategy closely tailored to a brand’s unique vision and story, as well as consumer values and needs. Applying the principles of basic storytelling to marketing is nothing new, but most luxury brands lack a foundational, documented content strategy to guide the planning, creation, management, and oversight of content across channels. Luxury brand content is often isolated, even stifled, by excessive siloing of internal teams and a lack of internal standards, processes, and rules to guide brand storytelling and content consistency across channels, never mind being able to target content to consumer preferences and monitor content performance in real-time.
Luxury brand content, both IRL and digital, needs more than storytelling to thrive. Each piece of content or brand messaging needs to answer consumers' “why” and “what’s it for” questions. Content strategy is about building better experiences with content that meets and anticipates consumer needs, guiding and supporting them throughout the buying journey.