What Miu Miu is Doing Right

FSW presents its new Shoppability Index and considers the value of customer-centric, content-first social strategy as a factor in luxury brand performance.

Everyone is writing about the slowdown in luxury sales. The explanation is often framed in the context of slowing consumer demand in China, general macro headwinds, or perhaps a regression to a pre-pandemic mean. And, of course, there are some nuances to the general story with the Q3 earnings numbers looking pretty decent from Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli, and a handful of others. But what the heck is going at Miu Miu?

In 2024, Miu Miu has consistently posted impressive year-over-year growth, with retail sales skyrocketing by 50% in Q1, climbing further to 57% in Q2, and reaching a place with thin oxygen at 105% in Q3. This quarterly progression underscores Miu Miu's remarkable rise as a key growth driver for the Prada Group, to which Miu Miu now contributes about 25 percent of sales. (Just for establishing a baseline, the Prada brand, which contributes about 75 percent of sales, only grew 4 percent).

One contributor to Miu Miu’s success this year has been its appeal to younger demographics and its strategic product lineup, which includes trending items like its viral microskirt. Ready-to-wear and accessory sales have been robust, showcasing the brand’s ability to capture Gen Z and millennial interest. This contrasts with some of Miu Miu's high-fashion competitors, which rely more on traditional, higher-priced items that have faced mixed responses this year. Prada Group’s strategy of expanding Miu Miu’s offerings and broadening its price range has allowed the brand to balance luxury appeal with accessibility, further fueling its growth momentum.

However, there is more to the Miu Miu story than the product and pricing mix. Miu Miu takes a more practical approach to social media content with a mostly shoppable Instagram account, a content functionality choice that stands apart from other luxury brands. As we will explore, Miu Miu’s customer-centric, shoppable Instagram content marketing strategy is spot-on for the brand’s target audiences and differentiates it from other luxury brands.

FSW Markets Selected Luxury Instagram Shoppability Index

Any summary of luxury brand tactics on a single content platform on a given day represents, at best, a snapshot of a moment in time and may lead to spurious conclusions. However, adopting a wider lens towards social media with a longer time series produces some interesting takeaways. In this spirit, our FSW Markets team created an index of Instagram content shoppability with a select range of luxury brands to evaluate which brands use Instagram’s built-in shopping features and functionality.

This FSW Markets Selected Luxury Shoppability Index considered luxury brand posts for around 30 Instagram posts per brand (covering a few weeks of content for most brands). For the index, we evaluated Instagram content for a select group of luxury brands on a three-part scale:

• The highest category of “mostly shoppable” means that the majority of the brand’s Instagram posts are shoppable and that products can be purchased directly through the app.

• The middle category of “partially shoppable” means that a few of the brand’s Instagram posts are shoppable and that a few products can be purchased directly through the app.

• The lower category of “not shoppable” means that none of the brand’s Instagram posts are shoppable with no products available for purchase directly through the app.

In our assessment, the “mostly shoppable” category is a signal of customer-centric, content-first social strategy with posts that are easily shoppable. This is as opposed to a brand-centric, creative-first social strategy with posts that are often a creative mood board or are celebrity or product-focused from a specific campaign or event and not shoppable.

The results of this index reveal some interesting, impressionistic trends. Balenciaga and Miu Miu top the list, with the most fully shoppable Instagram accounts. The main caveat here is that Balenciaga regularly cleans its social media accounts and only has seven Instagram posts at the time of publication, six of which are shoppable. Miu Miu, on the other hand, has been making use of Instagram’s shoppable features and functionality for a while, with a significant majority of shoppable product posts.

In the tier below, a small portion of brands—namely, Loro Piana, Valentino, Versace, and Zegna—occasionally post shoppable content, though these posts are in the minority and are almost always handbags. The rest of the index, which comprises 29 of the world’s major luxury brands, make zero use of Instagram’s shoppable content functionality, even though many have been experimenting with the platform’s calendar and broadcast subscription direct messaging functionalities.

Tailored Platform Strategy or Why Shoppable Content Works for Miu Miu

The takeaway from this index is not that luxury brands are missing out by not using shoppable content on Instagram. Rather, it is simply to imply that part of Miu Miu’s recent sales success can be attributed to its extensive use of Instagram’s shoppable content features and functionality. This suggests that Miu Miu has a targeted, content-first social strategy closely attenuated to its younger, socially active consumer base and their specific content consumption habits and preferences.

As our FSW team has extensively explored, taking a content-first approach to products and marketing matters greatly for fashion and luxury retailers looking to differentiate themselves for today’s consumers. But luxury and digital have, at best, a tenuous relationship, with many luxury brands still struggling to find their feet in a digital ecosystem that is constantly changing.

Even with success stories like MyTheresa, the collapse of Farfetch earlier this year revealed that the emperor of luxury e-commerce had no clothes. Digital-wise, the luxury industry needs to focus on core strategy to build leaner, value-driven models focused on content-as-a-service with technology fit for purpose rather than the tactical, reactive decision-making that drives much of luxury tech and marketing decision-making. Now is the time for fashion and luxury brands to focus on holistic content strategy to drive smarter, more customer-focused experiences and authentic, immersive, and co-created stories.

A broad sweep of luxury brand content produces an overriding sense of sameness from brand to brand and a profound lack of distinct digital experiences. Miu Miu’s shoppable Instagram content marketing strategy stands apart both because it is different but also because it is brand-appropriate. Unlike luxury content marketing strategy, which revolves around the weeds of customer engagement, conversion, and entertainment, holistic content strategy is overarching and closely tailored to a brand’s vision and the needs of its consumers.

Arguably, a holistic content strategy can enable luxury brands to take more calculated risks with content across channels because it comes from a place of collaborative brand thinking, customer data, and, ideally, a test-and-learn approach. After all, the easiest way to determine what content will drive consumers more quickly to a purchase decision is through smaller-scale, localized pilots to test different platform content features or specific content types. Is shoppable content the future of luxury digital? Obviously not for all brands but we hope to see more brands experimenting stepping out of their comfort zones to deliver more memorable digital experiences for consumers.