• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, September 30, 2015

A new report from Brandwatch shows that while high-end fashion brands — led by Chanel, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton — may get plenty of attention on social media, they have a lot of growing up to do. They score poorly on measures of engagement, compared to other industries. And the 32 brands tracked in the study are far less active, missing out on opportunities to build their audiences. 

“The industry as whole is rather immature in regards to social media intelligence,” writes Adam Edwards, sector director at Brandwatch, in the report. “Most businesses are relatively quiet and lack any sufficient social listening capabilities,” and a few that don’t even have a presence on Twitter.

Brandwatch finds that on average, luxury fashion brands tweeted less than twice a day, and also made fewer than two postings on Facebook. By comparison, leading food and beverage brands tweet nearly 27 times on an average day. More concerning, it found that these brands mostly ignore their audience, and typically reply, retweet or comment less than once a day. And while the social media universe is most likely to be talking about these brands on Sunday evenings, that’s when brands themselves are least active.

Brandwatch based its report on some 721,140 social conversations from brands like Armani, Michael Kors, and Tory Burch, analyzing them for social visibility, general visibility, net sentiment, reach growth, and social engagement and content. Chanel, Calvin Klein, and Christian Dior scored highest overall in the five categories. (Kenzo, Dsquared and DKNY came in last.) And while Chanel ranked highest in social visibility, Coach has the most positive sentiment.

One surprise in the results is that consumers are more likely to talk about these brands in connection to music than to fashion. For example, in its sample, people mentioned Justin Bieber in relation to Calvin Klein more 87,000 times, while Ariana Grande propelled mentions of Coach and Miley Cyrus sparked conversations about both Prada and Versace.

Nearly 70% of the conversations about luxury fashion came from women. By occupation, they were most likely to be artists (40%); executives (14%) or students (13%).

“The luxury fashion industry has been comparatively slow to attend to fans and followers on social media, with a few exceptions, which is surprising given this industry’s commitment to top notch customer service and quality,” adds Edwards. “Luxury customers expect white glove service and, done right, social affords these brands a powerful platform for engaging and strengthening customer loyalty.”