This article is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Beauty Edit newsletter, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis, the Beauty Trend Tracker and Leadership Advice, sign up for Vogue Business membership here.
During couture week in Paris, Dior took over a luxury yacht at Port Henri IV and reimagined it as a floating spa and wellness destination, with a branded pool, roof deck and private treatment rooms. It was the second time the LVMH brand co-opted a yacht for this purpose; aimed at bringing holistic wellness to the French capital at a busy time for the fashion set.
The Dior spa cruise follows its first-ever train spa carriage, held in collaboration with luxury train operator the Royal Scotsman in the UK in April, and is among a flurry of other immersive wellness activations and retreats that luxury beauty brands are staging this summer. Among them, La Mer, the high-end skincare brand owned by Estée Lauder, recently made its Spa de la Mer experience available offsite for its top clients. Jo Loves, the fragrance brand founded by British perfumer Jo Malone, has teamed up with the Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts to offer its first-ever overnight experience.
Experiential moments can help build brand equity. More time spent with a brand could also lead to higher customer retention and more frequent purchases — a win for companies looking for lifetime value. However, it can be costly, especially for smaller or independent labels, to sustain in the long term. There’s also plenty of competition.
“People identify with strong brands and are willing to pay very high margins for brands they have a connection with,” says Barbara E Kahn, a marketing professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. “The stakes are only getting higher and higher to build a relationship with a high value customer who will stay loyal over time.”
While some companies, including Prada and Tiffany Co, are investing in hospitality offerings that serve as a new entry point to luxury, these beauty experiences are so extravagant that they’re not accessible to most shoppers. Instead of seeking to build brand awareness among aspirational shoppers, the focus is on activations that strengthen relationships with a brand’s top spenders. On the Dior yacht, guests could book hour-long treatments such as a massage or facial, or opt for a longer wellness cruise including pilates, yoga and mobility conditioning.
“Luxury brands like Dior have always had beauty as the lower tier of their pyramid. It’s been an entry point for consumers who want to get to know the brand,” says Thomai Serdari, a professor of fashion and luxury marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “Now, they’re reversing this approach and creating a second pyramid that lures the VIC [very important customer], because if you don’t have a direct-to-consumer relationship, it’s very hard to keep growing. Many brands realised during the pandemic it was hard to have cash flow, especially if they only had wholesale relationships.”
La Mer: Getting closer to its top customers
Serdari observes that many of the brands now leaning into hospitality “already stage remarkable events around fashion weeks and know how to put together a distinguished experience”. However, she notes the extensive costs involved and challenges with sustaining a high output of events. Luxury companies that rely solely on heritage are at risk of losing relevance in the eyes of a younger and more dynamic customer, she believes. As a result, more brands are turning into production houses as they seek to create cultural capital, she says. “This is the problem with the luxury market. It’s always more, more, more, [whether it’s] demand for more content or creative experiences.”
La Mer sees an opportunity to get closer to its top customers. “Being a luxury brand means so much more than creating high quality products. It’s [about offering] a complete experience,” says Kendal Ascher, the Estée Lauder Companies’s senior vice president of luxury brands for North America and general manager of La Mer and Darphin Paris. “As our customer returns to in-person shopping, we wanted to find a way to bring a new experience to them, unlike what they’d previously been used to.”
Complimentary facial treatments are offered for VICs at its retail partners in the US such as Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. The brand is also staging pop-up spas at luxury resorts including Scottsdale’s Sanctuary and Orange County’s Pelican Hill, where guests can undertake treatments and socialise or relax in the private indoor and outdoor areas. They are the only venue where clients can experience its new signature facial, which was developed exclusively by celebrity esthetician Georgia Louise.
The aim of taking Spa de La Mer offsite is to invite clients to “extend their time spent relaxing and rejuvenating, rather than diving back into a hectic world”, Ascher explains. So far, La Mer has had an “incredible” response from its top customers, despite only launching the new offering this spring. Top clients deliver 30 per cent higher sales than the brand’s typical targets via these events, he says. The time spent has been remarkable, he adds. “We see some clients stay for hours.”
That kind of relationship building can help La Mer build a trove of first party data, which not only acts as an important resource in making advertising spend and product development more effective, the brand can also cater to customers on a more personalised level. “Spa de La Mer allows our clients to spend time with our experts [who then know them] on a personal level — their birthdays, anniversaries, families, how work is going,” says Ascher. “When the client is spending an extended amount of time with us, it’s an opportunity for our teams to build loyalty, one to one.”
Jo Loves: Creating an immersive world
Available from July and priced at £1,200, guests can experience a curated Jo Loves stay at the Shangri-La at the Shard in London, which includes custom-made cocktails and chocolates and an exclusive selection of Jo Loves products. The hotel has also become the first in the world to offer a full range of cosmetics by Jo Loves thanks to a new partnership this year with luxury hotel amenity provider Vanity Group.
Luxury brands have long supplied hotel bathroom products and sold goods in the lobby. Now, deeper partnerships are forming with hotels. A win-win scenario?
Partnerships have always been core to the marketing strategy at Jo Loves, but the Shangri-La experience is the largest and most immersive for the brand so far, says global marketing and communications director Jenna Vlastnik. Instead of investing heavily in traditional advertising campaigns, which can be trickier to track, the brand is focused on bringing customers into the Jo Loves world instead of “just placing a product in their hands”, she says. “It’s about immersing guests in the full experience, from enjoying a Jo Loves-inspired cocktail at the hotel bar to having a butler run you a bath in the evening with a curation of Jo Loves scented products.”
Jo Loves is “on a growth trajectory and has been focused on expanding internationally as part of that. But, we are thinking differently about how we do things,” explains Vlastnik.
More partnerships will follow as the brand has been “inundated” with requests, says Vlastnik. Overnight stays curated by Jo Loves at the Shangri-La Al Husn, Muscat, are available from August, and the brand is in talks with other hospitality firms, according to Vlastnik. Jo Loves will provide amenities for new luxury hotel The BoTree, which opens in London this month, and is exploring another activation for December, she says.
Kahn acknowledges that not all brands have the same sizable budgets as those backed by a large conglomerate. But they can win if they think cleverly about both their online and offline touchpoints, she believes. “Anything that creates a real-time experience and builds engagement with the brand [can have an impact]. It could be as simple as a fun game.”
While experiential moments can excite audiences and introduce them to something different, alignment is key. “Don’t do it just for adding an experience to your brand; it has to be something that builds on your values and you have to be sincere in what you’re saying,” warns Kahn.
Commitment will yield results, believes Jo Loves’s Vlastnik. “The key thing for us is that it’s not a flash in the pan. It’s about how we can build those relationships and experiences over the longer term.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
How A24-backed Half Magic blends beauty and entertainment
More isn’t more: Beauty rethinks pace of new launches
Beyond K-beauty: Inside Amorepacific’s fight for global dominance
