BTS Helps Increase Online Audience for Louis Vuitton Men’s Show
GO GO: Add Louis Vuitton to the list of luxury brands leveraging the power of K-pop. The French fashion house won its biggest online audience yet for a men’s fashion show, thanks to a teaser campaign by South Korean boy band BTS.
The video for its fall 2021 collection, which explored themes of racial identity and cultural appropriation, has been viewed more than 105 million time since it was unveiled on Jan. 21, surpassing the number of views for its spring 2021 show in Shanghai last year, the brand said Friday.
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The top platform was Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which garnered close to 35 million views. On Western platforms, Twitter was the leader with 17 million views, closely followed by YouTube, which saw interest soar thanks to the advance posts by BTS on Instagram and Twitter.
By Jan. 26, the platform had garnered a total of 916,000 views of the video, nine times the amount for the fall 2020 show, and Louis Vuitton’s YouTube page recruited 200,000 followers in a day.
Online chatter focused mainly on whether BTS would attend the show, which was filmed in Paris without guests due to the ongoing restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic. A similar teasing campaign by Blackpink member Rosé had driven views for Saint Laurent’s summer 2021 women’s ready-to-wear show in December.
“BTS fans spotted the looks worn by the band and posted them online, creating a huge increase in traffic and demand on our website,” Vuitton reported.
While BTS were not present, the show featured special appearances by Saul Williams, rapper Yasiin Bey — better known by his stage name Mos Def — and British poet Kai-Isaiah Jamal, the first Black transgender model to walk for Louis Vuitton.
The brand said its social media accounts saw 130,000 engagements per post on average, 10 percent higher than average, and the engagement is growing show after show for its men’s collections, designed by Virgil Abloh. Its most popular video on TikTok was viewed more than 12 million times.
See also:
Louis Vuitton Fall Men’s Collection Explores Cultural Appropriation
Aided Partly by Blackpink’s Rosé, Saint Laurent’s Desert Film Was a Hit
Louis Vuitton Men’s Show Sets Record for Livestreams in China
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