A Jeweler Joins Its Friends on MySpace
By Eric Pfanner
July 31, 2008
New York Times

As for Cartier, the luxury jeweler, it has more than 3,800 friends, including Sting, the band Good Charlotte and Lou Reed. And while the sincerity of these friendships is questionable — when was the last time that Eric Clapton
sent Cartier a birthday card, or vice versa? — they send a message that
Cartier cares about people who spend their time on MySpace.

Cartier, owned by Richemont of France, is one of the first luxury
brands to hang out its shingle on a social networking site, for fairly
obvious reasons. How do you market items of the
you-can’t-afford-it-if-you-have-to-ask-the-price variety to a
population that is heavily represented by people who make their money
by baby-sitting and mowing lawns?

“To work in the luxury environment, it means being a step in advance
sometimes,” Corinne Delattre, director of communications at Cartier,
said. “We work with people moving fast. They use technology. They are
ahead in their way of life.”

On its MySpace site (myspace.com/lovebycartier),
Cartier has many friends who it hopes fit this description. Most of
them are not famous, but the jeweler is counting on them nonetheless to
spread the vibe through the social network and beyond.

The MySpace profile was set up to advertise jewelry in Cartier’s
Love collection, but visitors can also sample music from artists like
Lou Reed and Grand National, including several songs with the theme of
love that were composed for Cartier. They can watch film clips with a
romantic story line. And, of course, they can click on any of those
friends’ pictures to visit their profiles.

The possibility of blending entertainment and marketing and
spreading it through chain letter-style links has many marketers
excited about social networking. But luxury brands, worried about the
company they keep, have been reluctant to become involved with the
likes of MySpace or Facebook. Cartier took the risk, Ms. Delattre said, because it was a “different way to talk to a young audience.”

Actually, many expensive brands have been slow to move to the
Internet generally, let alone to freewheeling frontiers like social
networks. Some brand owners have spent years battling eBay, the online auction site, contending that it does too little to curb sales of fakes. Others have clashed with Google over its advertising system, which has allowed rival marketers to snatch away trademarks as search keywords.

A number of fashion and luxury companies have advertised on
ASmallWorld, an invitation-only social network aimed at wealthy
consumers. Now some of them are getting their first exposure to
mainstream, mass-market social networks. Some have “fan pages” on
Facebook, which allow people to post videos of themselves wearing their
favorite designer fashions, for example.

But practically anyone can set up a page on Facebook, at no cost,
which demonstrates two of the biggest problems with social networking
as an advertising medium. One, for the advertiser, is a lack of control
over the process. The other, for the network owner, is the lack of
money changing hands: if “fans” of a luxury brand voluntarily tell
their friends about it, why should the brand owner spend any money to
do so?

Though ad spending on MySpace has trailed expectations, the company, part of the News Corporation,
thinks it has solved some of the problem, with the Cartier campaign
serving as a model. MySpace requires big marketers that want to create
profiles to pay for the space, though it declined to say how much
Cartier was being charged for its yearlong campaign.

In return, MySpace takes steps to drive traffic to advertisers’
profiles and to ensure that the material that appears on them “respects
the brand’s objectives,” as Damien Vincent, head of sales at MySpace
France, put it. In the case of Cartier, that means weeding out some
would-be friends. Candidates whose photos show them guzzling a beer at
a party, for instance, are unlikely to make the cut, Mr. Vincent said.

MySpace is eager to show that its audience extends beyond teenagers
looking to kill time after school. Eighty-five percent of American
users are over 18, it says. “I think there’s a huge potential market
for luxury advertisers,” said Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice president
for content and marketing at MySpace International.

Ben Hourahine, futures editor at the London branch of the
advertising agency Leo Burnett, said the use of social networks was
appropriate at a time when consumer attitudes about luxury were
changing. In a recent survey of American consumers by the agency, only
7 percent said they thought “luxury” meant being part of an exclusive
club.

“Luxury brands in the past had this unattainable aspect to them,” he
said. “Now they realize they need to connect and communicate with
people.”