Announcing the 2015 Luxury Daily Awards winners

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Giorgio Armani, Neiman Marcus, Porter magazine, Fashionbi and Curalate are the winners of the 2015 Luxury Daily Awards.

The 2015 honors acknowledge outstanding consumer-focused strategic, tactical and creative thinking by luxury brands, luxury retailers, luxury-focused agencies, luxury publishers and luxury-oriented researchers for work done in calendar year 2015.

The Luxury Daily Awards were decided based on luxury marketing efforts with impeccable strategy, tactics, creative, executive and results. All candidates selected by the Luxury Daily editorial team and from reader nominations had to have appeared in Luxury Daily coverage this year. Judging was based purely on merit.

“The outstanding characteristic of luxury marketing, retail and media this year is the increasing sophistication of digital messaging and marketing driving traffic online and to mobile and retail destinations,” said Mickey Alam Khan, editor in chief of Luxury Daily, New York.

Below are the write-ups for this year’s winners:

Armani’s New Normal fall/winter 2015

Armani is 2015 Luxury Marketer of the Year
Italian fashion label Giorgio Armani is Luxury Daily’s 2015 Luxury Marketer of the Year for peeling back the curtains of its brand history in a meaningful, consistent way.

Armani was successful at maintaining a consistent brand message throughout the year. The brand’s anniversary campaign explored all aspects of its business in great detail.

Celebrating a milestone 40 years in business, Armani took the opportunity to remind consumers of how far it has come, solidifying its position in the luxury industry through lasting initiatives. Burberry, which placed second, stood out for its innovation in digital channels and early adoption of new social platforms, while third place winner Gucci made moves as it transitioned to the vision of newly instated creative director Alessandro Michele.

First runner’s-up: Burberry
Throughout 2015, Britain’s Burberry was consistently a frontrunner in embracing new possibilities in digital channels.

This particularly noticeable on Snapchat, where the brand hosted the first fashion show and ad campaign. Burberry was also the first to collaborate with DreamWorks Animation’s technology firm NOVA and playing off its Burberry Acoustic music series, the label also created the first-ever branded Apple Music channel.

Second runner’s-up: Gucci
Italy’s Gucci revealed a new look under creative director Alessandro Michele. Starting with collections and expanding to its stores and marketing, the label has traded its formerly overt sex appeal for romanticism (see story).

Neiman Marcus in Walnut Creek, CA

Neiman Marcus is 2015 Luxury Retailer of the Year
Department store chain Neiman Marcus is Luxury Daily’s 2015 Luxury Retailer of the Year for its embrace of digital and cross-channel marketing, particularly its introduction of innovative digital technologies at the in-store level.

With the constant fear that in-store retail could be dying as consumers increasingly turn toward ecommerce sites to make purchases, it goes without saying that retailers are in a position where they are forced to adapt. Neiman Marcus has proven itself to be among the fastest, most creative and most efficient adapters to this and other changes in the shopping experience related to the growth of online and mobile shopping.

Neiman Marcus won over the first runner’s-up Barneys New York and second runner’s-up Net-A-Porter. These top luxury retailers appealed to affluent consumers not only through their product selection but also with a diverse array of marketing tactics, innovations and excellent service across all channels, making shopping enjoyable and fun for their consumers.

First runner’s up: Barneys New York
Department store chain Barneys New York, which has a presence in Japan as well as the U.S., was also a leader in the move to digital and cross-channel integration. The chain unveiled a new Web Site in March and in September launched an iPad app for The Window, its editorial magazine.

Second runner’s up: Net-A-Porter
The online-only Net-A-Porter was founded on the belief that ecommerce would explode and has found ways to thrive even as more brands operate their own ecommerce platforms. Net-A-Porter remains the first choice for many brands that do not yet operate their own ecommerce platforms and has leveraged its position to attain numerous exclusives from big-name brands (see story).

Image courtesy of Porter magazine

Porter is 2015 Luxury Publisher of the Year
Online retailer Net-A-Porter’s magazine Porter is Luxury Daily’s 2015 Luxury Publisher of the Year for its innovative mixture of print and digital content and its successful disruption of standard industry practice.

The publication gave Net-A-Porter a physical extension of its brand, a move that both relied on frequent consumers and also reinforced their loyalty to the outlet.

Perhaps its most notable innovation, however, is in mixing digital into the print magazine. Accompanying the print magazine is an app that recognizes the images in the magazine, allowing consumers to shop directly from the magazine without having to go through the steps of identifying the product, doing a search and locating the product page.

Porter won over the first runner’s-up The New York Times and second runner’s-up Modern Luxury, a media company that targets consumers in niche groups. These top luxury publications aimed to appeal to the lifestyle of affluent readers by featuring advertisements from the industry’s leading brands, services and travel destinations while providing an outlet for relevant content.

First runner’s up: New York Times
Despite a lengthy and storied history as a print publication, the New York Times has made considerable and successful efforts to emerge as a pioneer in the world of digital publications over the past year. Front and center of those efforts is an embrace of native advertising, following in the footsteps of Condé Nast, who in turn followed digital native Buzzfeed.

Second runner’s up: Modern Luxury
With almost 70 publications, Modern Luxury has struck gold with a one-of-a-kind business model. Rather than relying on anything close to an advertising blitz or casting a wide net, hyper-localized and niche, special-interest publications allow for more effective and specific marketing (see story).

Affluent millennials

Fashionbi is 2015 Luxury Researcher of the Year
Fashionbi is Luxury Daily’s 2015 Researcher of the Year for its comprehensive examination of the trends on both the marketing and consumer side of the fashion world.

Over the past year, Fashionbi has stood out by taking a close look at aspects of the fashion industry that its peers have not given full attention to. Research includes both looks at a brand’s marketing, consumer behavior or societal response.

This research has led to a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of the industry that extends beyond marketing, often with surprising highlights regarding the consumer’s point of view. 

Fashionbi won over first runner’s-up Boston Consulting Group and second runner’s-up L2. All three researchers delivered insights to the affluent consumer and discerned the trends in luxury for brands to grasp a more comprehensive understanding of the marketplace.

First runner’s up: Boston Consulting Group
Boston Consulting Group was the first runner’s-up for its detailed research on globalization initiatives and opportunities on both fledgling markets and those that are already big players in luxury.

Second runner’s up: L2
L2 continues to release highly detailed reports about the inner workings of brands and their marketing, from Web site design and functions to digital marketing initiatives and advertising spend (see story).

Curalate Like2Buy

Curalate is 2015 Luxury Agency of the Year
Curalate is Luxury Daily’s 2015 Agency of the Year for its consumer engagement and brand awareness analytics and marketing.

Curalate was selected in part for its Like2Buy social media innovation. The agency discerned trends in consumer behavior for brands and found ways to make a connection and drive traffic from social media to ecommerce sites.

Over the past year, Curalate has innovated the manner in which consumers interact with brands and go through the purchase journey, spotting trends in behavior that labels could use to foster engagement and build relationships. Its innovations have not just smoothed the buying process but also radically reconfigured it in a way that both generates increased sales for brands and is convenient for the consumer.

Chief among these is Like2Buy, which makes images posted to Instagram “shoppable.” When a brand posts a picture of a product to Instagram, consumers can now click on the Like2Buy link placed in a brand’s bio and then on the photo. These steps then takes the consumer directly to an ecommerce page to purchase the featured product.

Like2Buy has taken off this year, with many big name players adopting it. Department stores Barneys New York and Nordstrom have both made it a mainstay of social media content (see story).

from Luxury Daily » Apparel and accessories http://www.luxurydaily.com/2015-luxury-daily-awards-honorees/
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