An Anti-Tech Action in the Tech-Era: Bottega Veneta deletes its Social Media

The world of business and fashion were particularly impressed when, at the beginning of the new year, Bottega Veneta, a company of Italian excellence of the French luxury group Kering, deleted all its social media accounts, including Instagram which had more than 2.5 million followers.

In the era in which the existence of a business is sanctioned by baptism on social media and the digital presence functions as a public identity, can we talk of an avant-garde move or a relegation?

In fact, if until a few years ago the web mainly offered an additional possibility of support, experimentation and innovation, today both due to the development of technologies and in a global pandemic context, the fashion-online binomial has inevitably become closer. The first consequence was certainly the possibility to reach a worldwide audience and this mainly benefited brand awareness and sales themselves in the second place, and even minor companies and startups had the possibility of an exponential growth. Consider that the share of e-commerce, only in the luxury goods market for the person, increased by 12% in 2019 and by 23% in 2020 and a further growth of up to 30% is expected by 2025.

In such a scenario, then, what prompted the fashion house to take such a radical action? The hypotheses on the table are many, from a gimmick for promotion to the desire to launch a new trend.

To an expert eye, it may all seem less strange than one might think. Let's take a step back. In 2019, the Marketing Director Dario Gargiulo had stated "First of all, we emphasize beauty and subtlety. We avoid providing other detailed explanations about our brand". Bottega is an exclusive brand that wants to maintain this exclusivity, in an almost whispered idea of ​​luxury. It is an aspect that can be found under various facets, style choices, communication choices, in the way of presenting the collections, in the figure of the creative director itself, Daniel Lee. The latter, who entered the position in 2018, immediately brought a wind of change and strengthened the brand's image of exclusivity. Defined by British Vogue as "The quiet radical", during an interview with the magazine he confessed "It was good to grow up in the pre-Instagram era, we had a lot of fun. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. I believe there will be a return to privacy. I really hope so ". A philosophy of privacy that during his experience at Celine he probably inherited from Phoebe Philo, an icon of post-internet coolness, (to be remembered her famous phrase “the most chic thing is when you don't exist on Google. I wish I wasn't there!” in 2013 to Vogue US). A cult that sees the boutique as a sort of sacred space and the absence as a fundamental element for the creation of that aura of mystery that must be characteristic of the true luxury. The keywords are therefore refinement and desire, as luxury is such because it is for the few.

Is maybe Bottega Veneta a pioneer of a new “disconnected” luxury for established and new businesses and could this be stronger than any number of followers on Instagram? Indeed, in an analysis through a survey among 500 executives working in the luxury industry shows social media is grossly underperforming luxury companies' expectations, whether they are world-renowned businesses or operating in market niches. The main reasons are linked to some characteristics of social networks: the algorithms that change are really difficult to face up for brands and the continuous bombardment of images to the eyes of the public makes the messages less impactful and above all within everyone's reach. “It hinders rather than helps the creative process. Everyone sees the same things, it's not healthy or productive. It does not generate individuality. "These are the words of the creative director.

Beyond the issues of brand identity, what really amazes and perplexes is the timing of the choice rather than the choice itself of deleting the social profiles of the fashion house. A very important paradigm shift that the pandemic brought was the technological development related to fashion shows and shows more generally: the digitization of events has allowed accessibility on a large scale and has developed very quickly, so much so that for example The Fédération de la Haute Couture de la mode has developed a digital device for the Paris fashion week, called the Paris Fashion Week @ platform. Bottega Veneta itself opted for an offline/online debut, so-called phygital, for the Spring/Summer 2021 collection: in London last October for a few intimates and online two months later. But what we really need to ask ourselves is: in a historical moment in which physical social interaction is reduced to a minimum, the only way to get noticed is with one's own online presence?

Although about 80% of sales in the luxury sector is "digitally influenced" and despite the fact that there are many big names questioning about the longevity of "all offline" brands, Bottega Veneta has decided to go against the tide and pay attention to telling and convey the value and values ​​of the brand. However, it is necessary to underline some fundamental details: first of all, it is necessary to make sure that the customer is aware of why the product is rare and that he is aware of the value that justifies the waiting for it. In traditional marketing, the aim is necessarily to increase sales, to expand one's market share and to reach as many customers as possible. In luxury, making a brand excessively widespread dilutes its value, making it lose that character of uniqueness and status that is its foundation. Secondly, Bottega Veneta was able to afford such a move because it is a world-renowned company, with its own consolidated market share and loyal customers. Definitely an action not recommended for any startup or a little-known brand since, as previously mentioned, it is even questionable for industry experts when it comes to established companies.

An anti-tech move in the tech age, perhaps just a gimmick to magnify the word of mouth and better sponsor the next collection, perhaps just a desire for detox or a real social media strategy. However, we like to think that it is more of a sort of return to origins, a rediscovered exclusivity that aims to enhance the uniqueness of identity and that aims to strengthen the desire in the public.