"A recent survey by Label Insights reveals, millennial consumers are curious about the companies they buy their clothes from. They covet transparency and honey and prefer to buy only from brands that are transparent. Apparel companies like LVMH’s Dior, Chanel, Gucci and Prada are therefore, supplementing visually-striking ads with mini-docs and behind-the-scenes videos on popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. This is resulting in an increase in the number of monthly views, steady subscriber growth, and increased brand affinity."

A recent survey by Label Insights reveals, millennial consumers are curious about the companies they buy their clothes from. They covet transparency and honey and prefer to buy only from brands that are transparent. Apparel companies like LVMH’s Dior, Chanel, Gucci and Prada are therefore, supplementing visually-striking ads with mini-docs and behind-the-scenes videos on popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. This is resulting in an increase in the number of monthly views, steady subscriber growth, and increased brand affinity.

Top apparel brands are also making documentaries to showcase their ethical or sustainable product launches. For this, they collaborated with creators and celebrities in the run-up to marquee fashion events like the Paris Fashion Week and the Met Gala besides embracing user-generated content (UGC).

Luxury brands top video makers

Currently accounting for 32 per cent of the total luxury expenditure, Millennials will comprise 50 per cent of the personal luxury market by 2025. This makes it essential for brands to earn customer’s loyalty and videos are an ideal way to achieve this.

Nowadays, millennials are most fascinated with videos that reveal the more authentic side of a brand. Nearly eight of the top 10 luxury videos across these social platforms showcase the making of luxury apparel. Most of them incorporate interviews with designers and artistic directors. Examples include. Dior’s video on how it creates the illusion of movement in its Dior Summer 20 men’s garments (#1) and how Chanel made its latest Métiers d’Art necklace with 1500 individual rhinestones (#6).

Spreading social messages

Taking UGC to the deluxe level, Italian fashion house Gucci crowdsources online video artists worldwide to create one-minute films about its Ace sneaker (#24HourAce). The brand then showcases this premium user-generated content on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, drawing millions of views. It commissions UGC artists who are in tune with social video trends.

This year, the brand has commissioned ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos to give millennials a brain massage, associating gentle sounds like whispers or squishes with good feelings about their newest product. And it works — every single Gucci video in the top ten list above related to ASMR. These collaborative videos of Gucci alongwith its readiness to embrace social video trends endears the brand to millennials.

Gucci also uses Performance Insights to keep a tab on trends like ASMR. These insights enable the brand to identify the top trends in real-time and create new videos that resonate with their audiences.

Nostalgia with time-based videos

Reintroducing ghosted concepts, luxury watch brand Chanel plans to gift millennials with a sense of time before the smartphone era. Its recent campaign promoting its new J12 watch disrupts that notion of time with a video series about the value of time in a fast-paced world.

The luxury brand features ten celebrities from Keira Knightley to Naomi Campbell in a classic black and white interview format. The celebrities muse on the most defining seconds of their lives. Though the brand’s videos feature celebrities with large social media followings, its star-studded content is only released on its official social channels.

Using a unique distribution mechanism to increase its followers, Under Armour recently partnered Dawyney ‘The Rock’ Joahnso for releasing all of its video content through the Rock’s channels instead of its own. This strategy resulted in millions of views and engagements for brand which gets 4.3M views and 836K engagements per upload.

Endorsing high-art

Christian Dior, voted eighth best apparel & accessory brand by cross-platform views creates beautiful video narratives to attract millions of monthly viewers. One of its recent videos shows artisans crafting the Dior’s 30 Montaigne bag at a leather goods workshop in Florence, Italy. The video earned4.5M views on Instagram. This stitch-by-stitch video provides millennials with the transparency they crave. The brand also uses video to establish itself as an enthusiast of high art.