When Jimmy Choo launched its autumn 2025 marketing campaign that includes Sydney Sweeney, some social media commenters lamented the model’s selection of the star following American Eagle’s controversy-addled “Good Jeans” advert starring the actress. But it illuminated a broader challenge the luxurious trade is going through: An epidemic of sameness.
The Choo marketing campaign, that includes Sweeney starring as totally different “characters” to characterize the assorted equipment she’s sporting, was the model’s second time spotlighting the actress (its first was in summer season 2024). It was additionally one of many that includes the star, who has been the face of manufacturers together with magnificence strains Laneige and Dr. Squatch. And whereas it depicted the flexibility of Jimmy Choo’s line of sneakers, the marketing campaign largely lacked a story angle that differentiated it from others within the luxurious house.
Just just a few months prior, Givenchy launched its autumn marketing campaign — its first underneath new artistic director Sarah Burton — that includes mannequin Kaia Gerber who, like Sweeney, has appeared in numerous model campaigns from Mango to DKNY. The advertisements have been meant as an instance the artistic relationship between girls at work, displaying seemingly candid moments between Gerber and the marketing campaign’s director Halina Reijn, script in hand.
It’s illustrative of a bigger drawback within the trade. The de facto luxurious advertising playbook — a mixture of splashy collaborations and celebrity-fronted campaigns, over-the-top runway reveals attended by of-the-moment influencers and alignment with scorching cultural property, whether or not it’s “Wicked” or the US Open — is delivering diminishing returns.
For many manufacturers, advertising has devolved right into a neverending sport of one-upmanship for client consideration on the expense of creativity and compelling storytelling. In flip, consumers, with countless choices for leisure, have discovered to tune manufacturers out.
“We’re in the era of content clutter,” mentioned Halie Soprano, senior influencer advertising advisor for creator advertising platform Traackr. The antidote is to “focus on fewer, strategic narratives that really allow the audience to connect with them and feel something,” she mentioned.
‘Bludgeoned by Luxury’
In the midst of a luxurious downturn, with US client sentiment approaching its lowest ranges of all time in November, entrepreneurs have taken to chasing consideration to remain above water.
But that technique is backfiring for a lot of manufacturers, contributing to the sensation that luxurious isn’t well worth the spend anymore. An countless stream of capsules, collections and collaborations — all marketed via numerous reveals, pink carpets and activations — have develop into a blur to shoppers, who can barely preserve monitor of who’s releasing the content material they’re seeing, or what differentiates one model from one other.
Or as Chanel watches and jewelry president, Frédéric Grangié, put it to the Swiss newspaper Time: “Consumers are tired of being bludgeoned by luxury.”
Rather than competing for virality within the short-term, the manufacturers that stand out on this oversaturated atmosphere give attention to what makes them distinctive — in essence, what is correct in entrance of them.
“To some degree, you have to simplify,” mentioned Milton Pedraza, founder and chief government of the consultancy Luxury Institute.
Moncler’s October marketing campaign that includes Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, for instance, leaned into the model’s core worth proposition — heat — and tied it again to the decades-long friendship between the actors. By leaning into emotion, the model was rewarded with its top-performing owned media placement of the 12 months, in response to the model efficiency platform Launchmetrics.
Self-Aware Storytelling
In the September marketing campaign for the revival of Chloé’s Paddington purse, which had its heyday within the early 2000s, the model employed Kendall Jenner – following within the footsteps of numerous different manufacturers, from Prada to Alo Yoga.
Despite her ubiquity, the marketing campaign was exceptionally well-received by audiences, and contributed to the second wave of recognition for the Phoebe Philo-designed purse. The secret contact? Jenner starred alongside different celebrities that lack her publicity within the vogue world, together with Aimee Lou Wood of “White Lotus” fame and singer Anna of Okay-pop group Meovv. In the advertisements, they starred as enviable Parisiennes, toting their Paddingtons across the metropolis in basic Chloé model.
The marketing campaign additionally labored as a result of it didn’t simply rent it-girls as half of an in any other case generic marketing campaign; their girl-about-town standing itself is central to the bag’s DNA. Indeed, twenty years in the past, Chloé equally tapped it-girls of the second like Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox to provide the bag its cachet.
Famous faces stay an essential piece of profitable campaigns, however they don’t have to be the whole puzzle.
In its spring marketing campaign referred to as “Craft Is Our Language,” Bottega Veneta highlighted the handicraft that goes into weaving its “intrecciato” leather-based. While the advertisements featured well-known names, together with Julianne Moore, Tyler, The Creator and Zadie Smith, the main target was on their tales about how they use their palms in their very own craft.
The marketing campaign additionally felt uniquely suited to Bottega Veneta. Under Matthieu Blazy’s artistic course, and persevering with underneath Louise Trotter, craftsmanship has been central to the model’s attraction because it feels more and more uncommon and refreshing as luxurious has develop into commodified.
“Consumers want to be convinced by the brand that their branding, ethos, values and aesthetic aligns with their own,” mentioned Hanushka Toni, chief government of luxurious resale platform Sellier.
The identical technique can work for trend-driven (and trend-driving) manufacturers, too. Miu Miu has managed a years-long scorching streak by telling tales rooted in a celebration of womanhood, whether or not by promoting unabashedly girly mini-skirts and attire or via its Literary Club occasion sequence, wherein girls focus on works by feminine authors. For the August launch of its new perfume, Miutine, the model despatched creators the fragrance together with miniature microphones and a set of inquiries to reply on digital camera, giving followers the instruments to create unscripted advertising that, as soon as once more, centres on the feminine expertise.
The smartest entrepreneurs will see room for evolution. Robert Burke, a luxurious advisor, mentioned that whereas the trade is undoubtedly at an inflection level, it can doubtless pressure manufacturers to get extra artistic and look past buzz to how they’ll create particular, memorable touchpoints via which clients can actually really feel a second of reference to the model’s world.
“The old formula that had worked so incredibly well and was so predictable is no longer as applicable,” mentioned Burke. “It’s a great opportunity. Sometimes these hard resets are good for everyone.”
Misled by Metrics
A transfer away from chasing virality additionally requires a rethink of how manufacturers measure advertising success.
One of the style trade’s customary advertising measures, earned media worth, calculates how a lot visibility, or virality, a advertising second acquired. But whereas it supplies a common barometer for the quantity of eyeballs on an advert, it fails to translate client notion.
Crucially, these metrics give little perception into whether or not content material displays what its creator is attempting to say and as an alternative prioritises visibility over all different issues.
Several platforms have been tweaking their metrics to offer a fuller image. Launchmetrics rolled out an replace to its media impression worth rating in August, utilizing AI to scrape on-line conversations and content material to measure how aligned advertising moments are with buyer notion of a model’s id, mentioned Launchmetrics’ chief advertising officer, Alison Bringé.
BoF’s personal AI-driven insights instrument, Insights Brand Pulseanalyses conversations round totally different advertising moments. Traackr, too, accounts for a way aligned content material is with a model’s id via its model vitality rating.
But of course, nobody metric can absolutely talk how a marketing campaign is touchdown, and can’t be checked out “in a vacuum,” mentioned Alex Rawitz, director of analysis and insights at CreatorIQ.
“You can have a lot of people talking about you, but it’s not necessarily a good thing,” mentioned Rawitz.