Exploring the Art of Attention with Louis Vuitton x Supreme
Collaborations are everywhere nowadays. Whether it’s with brands, celebrities, or influencers, you can’t escape a collaboration! Although collaborations are sometimes predictable and not exciting, there are times when a collaboration is completely unexpected and different, requiring a deep dive into the story behind it.
The reasons behind any collaboration are to increase brand visibility, reach wider audiences, and to create distinctive offerings to current and hopefully future customers. Brand collaborations can be genius and successful when executed correctly. It is all about capturing attention through creativity and innovation.
At Slice, we follow our own attention model to understand and determine what kind of attention our clients want from their audiences. There are 5 types of attention in the model: aware, connected, engaged, converted, and advocacy. We then figure out who the target audience of our clients is and how we can convey the key messaging to their target audience, through written, visual, video, experimental, and/or audio content. Finally, we connect it back to the types of attention the client wants by ensuring the content created is relevant, insightful, actionable, and inspiring.
Attention is so important when it comes to the success of a collaboration. Let’s explore one of my favorite collaborations of all time, the Louis Vuitton x Supreme collaboration, and how it was successful through each type of attention.
Image sourced from: WWD
Awareness
Awareness is the first and most important type of attention. This is when the audience knows the brand and is informed about it. At the time of the collaboration in 2017, both fashion brands were already very established and had a huge following and customer base. Louis Vuitton was and still is the biggest luxury fashion house in the world and Supreme was the largest streetwear brand with a cult-like following. However, these two brands were on two completely different sides of the fashion spectrum. The first thing people thought of when they heard Louis Vuitton was luxury and elegance. When people heard Supreme, they thought of streetwear or skateboards.
Even if people were aware of these brands individually before, this collaboration pushed people who would otherwise not explore the other brand to check out the collection and become aware of the other brand.
Connected
Connected attention indicates that the audience is interested in what the brand has to offer, and the audience is intrigued to find out more. During this stage, the audience is just browsing their options, they’re not fully committed to making a transaction. The collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Supreme was the first one in fashion history to connect luxury and streetwear through a collaboration. Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton did not want to jeopardize their exclusivity before by collaborating with a streetwear brand like Supreme. But, these two brands were the most sought-after brands in their respective fashion realms.
I remember at the beginning of 2017, there were so many rumors on the internet about a collaboration between the two brands after Kim Jones, the director of menswear at Louis Vuitton at the time, posted a picture of a Supreme logo sticker attached to a Louis Vuitton product and then deleted it on Instagram indicating a possible collaboration. This caught the attention of everyone involved in the fashion industry, everyone wanted to know if it was true, when it would happen, how it happened — everything! The collaboration collection debuted during Paris Men’s Fashion Week in 2017. After the rumors were confirmed, a genuine interest was sparked. Stemming from strategically heightened interest, attention moves on to the next phase: engagement.
Image sourced from: WWD
Engaged
After the “just browsing” phase of being connected, comes the moment of engagement. Engaged attention means the audience is genuinely interested and is willing to take action. Likely at this stage, they have committed to making a purchase and may have a short-list of brands that they are weighing against each other. In the case of the Louis Vuitton and Supreme collab, people were willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money to get their hands on this collection. This collaboration was the topic of discussion from before it was released (or even confirmed) to years after.
After debuting the collection during Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton and Supreme did not add the collection online. Instead, they only sold the collection at eight pop-up shops around the world. They shared when the pop-ups would happen on Instagram, randomly before the pop-ups would actually happen. This caught the attention of their audience and had their audience 100% engaged on when and where the next pop-up will be. People were willing to wait in queues, for hours and hours, for a mere chance to buy something from the collection.
Image sourced from: Harper Bazaar
Converted
Converted attention ultimately equates to transactions; This is when the audience takes action. A collaboration is a transaction in itself. Both Louis Vuitton and Supreme benefitted from the collaboration, aside from the revenue from the collection. For Supreme, the collaboration opened a new lane for the brand. It gave Supreme prestige and luxury and opened the door for many more collaborations with luxury fashion houses down the lane. For Louis Vuitton, the collaboration introduced a new generation of consumers. The collaboration connected and introduced the brand to streetwear which they incorporated into their brand moving forward.
Both brands built a loyal customer base on their own, and with the collaboration, they created more customers for the other brand. With only eight pop-ups (with limited access) for people to buy the collection at retail price, the resell world went crazy for the collection. There were outrageous amounts of markups on resell websites, and people were willing to spend the amount to own a piece of the collection.
Image sourced from: HypeBeast
Advocate
Advocate attention means the audience supports the key messaging. The Louis Vuitton and Supreme collaboration made history. There was an unspoken rule in the fashion industry that separated luxury and streetwear. The collaboration was the first one to connect the two and prove that it can be very successful. It paved the way for many collaborations that we know and love today. People refer to the collaboration as a game changer, and the legacy of it lives on forever.
Image sourced from: Instagram
Attention—both capturing it and sustaining it—is one of the most important aspects of marketing. When done correctly, brands can have lasting effects on their audience and industry.
