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Bottega Veneta’s latest campaign is a luxury take on guerrilla marketing: 1. Dress a regularly papped celebrity in a head-to-toe runway look. 2. Let the fashion press pick it up organically as street style content. 3. Turn those photos into your newest ads.
On 27 October, Vogue posted a paparazzi photo of Kendall Jenner in full Bottega while strolling through a gas station car park to its 47.3 million Instagram followers; linking to an article that identified the look as “fashion cowgirl”. On 14 November, Vogue covered yet another full-Bottega pap-walk look, this time featuring a trench from the resort 2024 collection. On Tuesday, Jenner posted an Instagram of said look in a three-photo swipe, only this time, the Bottega Veneta logo was splashed atop all three images. (Vogue and Vogue Business share a parent company, Condé Nast.)
A$AP Rocky was featured in Vogue even earlier this year, on 4 October, wearing a full look from the same collection replete with a big, bubblegum pink Andiamo bag. On Monday, that same outfit featured in the second slide of Rocky’s Instagram post announcing a partnership with the house.
Positioning a collection at the centre of our obsession with celebrity street style content drew expected buzz. “Bottega Veneta’s resort collection was already everywhere before we even realised it,” lawyer and fashion commentator Xander Cauwelier (who goes by Kea online) tweeted on the day of the drop. Already, fans were commending the brand for its savvy marketing play. And that was before Bottega licenced the images from celebrity media agency Backgrid and stock image supplier Getty Images for its pre-Spring 2024 campaign.
It’s what Thomaï Serdari, professor of marketing and director of NYU’s Fashion Luxury MBA calls a luxury approach to media: “Let others speak about you — you are above it all,” she says. “Exclusivity, dominance, true luxury positioning.” Bottega Veneta declined to comment for this article, or share details on the team behind the idea. A representative from Bottega Veneta said it was a concept by Matthieu Blazy.
It’s not the first time a Kering brand has tapped into the tabloid aesthetic. In September, Gucci featured Jenner and her boyfriend Bad Bunny in a campaign captured as if papped at the airport. And celebrities are often gifted full looks by brands to wear around town, as if they’re walking advertisements. Bottega’s point of difference is that Jenner and Rocky weren’t just papped wearing the looks, they were modelling a campaign before we knew it was one.
The rollout is the significant strategy here, says Sophie Roche Conti, founder of communications agency Conti Communications. “[Its ability to] prompt the consumer to look at the images twice is what makes it intelligent. The images are acknowledged initially as traditional paparazzi images, and now in our second sitting, we are re-digesting them in the context of a campaign. It’s a built-in double take.”
This new and organic marketing model relies upon a well-established pipeline wherein paparazzi photos of celebs outside hotspots, like Sushi Park and Carbone, are quickly splashed across fashion media sites and the Instagram and Twitter feeds of industry commentators and mags alike — and brands reap the benefits. Bottega took things one step further.
A luxury approach to media
Bottega Veneta doesn’t have an Instagram account — and it doesn’t need one. In the month leading up to the official campaign, fashion press and social media commentators shared the images of Rocky and Jenner widely, crowding consumers’ Instagram feeds with full Bottega and essentially filled the gap through collective labour.
Neither Jenner nor Rocky posted the pics before the official campaign launch, meaning they weren’t required to disclose it as such. Vogue posted. W posted. Harper’s Bazaar posted. Street style accounts posted. And Jenner and Rocky fan pages posted. It may feel like sponcon, but it wasn’t, because the campaign didn’t officially launch until the release of the logo-embossed photographs.
Putting paid social behind celebrity placements they’ve acquired and using those images as leading visuals is something digitally native Instagram brands have been doing for years, Conti flags. “The difference is, Bottega Veneta has both the means and the access to the best talent and photographers in the world, and this is the campaign they chose to produce,” she says. “Since the brand doesn’t have an Instagram account, their content and campaigns find their way into the mainstream media, and this campaign found a way to do that twice. It’s clever.”
It’s a double achievement, Serdari says. “They enable content that proliferates on the internet by its own power, its own velocity and achieve high visibility in a guerrilla-type of communication. At the same time, the pictures get reposted because the outfits and styling are hitting a chord. This is a tremendously powerful moment for Bottega Veneta.”
Can brands replicate?
Bottega’s approach proves how competitive campaigns have become, Serdari says. “Showcasing novelty, talent and relevance are not enough any longer. The public is seeking moments of thrill and surprise,” she says. Given this particular surprise element, it’ll be a tricky strategy for other luxury houses to replicate. That said, there are lessons to be learnt. Both the aesthetics and shock-factor are proven to work, so brands will want in.
Conti adds that the definition of what a campaign is or can be has changed significantly over the last decade. So brands have to level up. “A paparazzi image is spontaneous and surprising, which traditional campaign imagery is not.”
Serdari cautions against brands leaning too far into this element of surprise, however, particularly now that it’s been done. “If this is done too much, it can become tiring and it can push consumers away from brands if they feel they have been lied to.” Brands will want to tread carefully, for risk of product placements feeling more staged than before as consumers become increasingly attuned to the sponcon of it all, especially when not disclosed (when not technically an ad). This, if executed with too heavy a hand, risks consumer fatigue and resentment as well as fashion media retreat, should the clicks dry up.
The lesson brands can take away, Conti says, is to think about how the media machine operates, and strategise their content output accordingly with creative methods. “How do you slice through the algorithm and deliver the same content twice?” she asks.
It was a great strategy to do so (and a one-off). Any direct replication would now simply feel like a knock-off. “Well played Bottega,” Serdari says.
With reporting by José Criales Unzueta.
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