‘We’re not afraid to do things that are left field’: Loewe’s CMO on its killer TikTok strategy

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If you’ve scrolled through TikTok in recent months, there’s a chance you’ve seen Loewe’s content.

“Hey girls, is it cold out?” a woman beckons to two women below from a New York window wearing a shaggy yellow coat in a video from December. “Do I need something warm?” she asks, gesturing to the coat, “Do you like it? It’s Loewe.” The video has 16 million views. In another, creator Adanna Duru, famous for speaking in the style of different emojis, repeatedly says “Loewe” as an embarrassed emoji, a dolphin and a ghost. “Loewe wins marketing,” one user commented. “Loewe marketing is the highlight of my day,” another gushed.

Loewe has built up 1.8 million followers and 19.3 million likes on TikTok since it started posting on the platform post-pandemic (with vigour since 2022). While some of the major houses have bigger followings and continue to post exclusive, high-production-value content without humour, Loewe is spearheading how to effectively communicate on the platform, says Kristina Karassoulis, TikTok’s head of luxury brand partnerships. “The idea of transitioning from this elevated position of exclusivity into the realm of low culture, which often includes memes and internet humour, can seem daunting,” Karassoulis says. “But tradition is changing, and there is a paradigm shift underway. Loewe is a great example of that.”

By leaning into trending sounds, using viral content creators who are not straightforward fashion influencers, and harnessing its fashion week front row to create snappy, humorous celebrity content, Loewe has built resonance with younger audiences. The strategy has been led by chief marketing officer Charlie Smith, who joined Loewe from advertising firm R/GA in 2018. Upon appointment, the brand was much smaller, he says, and its digital marketing was centred on amplifying campaigns. Now, it has the resources to be able to create platform-specific strategies.

Alongside the creative direction of Jonathan Anderson, it’s helping to transform the LVMH-owned label — once a craft-led heritage house beloved by older consumers — into a buzzy luxury house for a new generation. The Loewe logo was the hottest of 2023, according to Lyst. The last time LVMH broke out earnings for the brand, in 2022, its revenues had nearly doubled to €626 million. And in LVMH’s Q4 2023 sales, Bernard Arnault called out Loewe as a “great success”.

Here, Smith breaks down the strategy.

Vogue Business: The TikTok campaign has clearly resonated. How has the strategy evolved to get to this point?

When I first joined, Loewe was much smaller than it is now. We were focused on creating digital content that could sit alongside the campaigns that we were shooting. Now, we are bigger, and we have the resources to create a specific strategy for each platform. Today, we’re competing for people’s attention, right? Not just with other luxury brands, but with just the general amount of noise that there is out there in the modern media landscape. So, we had to think differently.

Vogue Business: How do you differentiate your approach between TikTok and other platforms?

Fundamentally, TikTok is for entertainment. There are a lot more passive people on TikTok than there are on Instagram. So we take that as the starting point. Having spent time on TikTok ourselves, we had to sit down and think, what should Loewe’s voice on TikTok be? Part of the thing about Loewe is that it’s a Spanish luxury brand. And part of its ‘Spanishness’ is being more approachable, kind of casual, warm and friendly. TikTok was a really good opportunity for some of those attributes to come through. We just generally don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re trying to deeply engage with the culture of the platform rather than doing something surface-level.

In marketing, they say the number one way to grow awareness is through word of mouth. We’re hindered in that department because five different people will pronounce “Loewe” five different ways and won’t know that they’re talking about the same brand! So we’re constantly thinking of ways of getting that brand pronunciation out there. But also doing it in a fun and light-hearted way, in a kind of un-serious way.

Vogue Business: Internet culture moves on so quickly these days, from one trend to the next. How do you stay up to date?

I’ll be completely honest, I feel a bit old now, so I often defer to my younger colleagues on what’s cool on those platforms and what’s not. Some trends have worked so well for us. We recently did a video on the “cake or not cake” trend. Initially, the meme was people making these amazing-looking cakes that look really real, so you can’t tell if it’s cake or not. We took that and made a parody of the meme, with really bad cakes, to take the mickey out of the whole thing. I think that’s the kind of sense of humour that I think people really enjoy on TikTok because it’s so unusual for a luxury brand to behave in that way.

We try to have an overall balance of content where it’s going from the making of the Puzzle bag to Jamie Dornan being interviewed on “what’s great about being a daddy”. There’s a flow and a rhythm to the different types of content, and they help balance each other out.

Vogue Business: How do you come up with ideas?

Our starting point is, how can we make as entertaining a video as possible? The rest is like OK, who are we going to work with, what’s the angle going to be? And then how can we weave some product in? Product is not the starting point. We get in a room, and people suggest creators. We try not to go for the obvious; that’s what people have really enjoyed about who we’ve worked with. People are like, “This is the crossover that I didn’t know I wanted”. We’re not afraid to do things that are a bit left field as well because I think we have that kind of quirky sense of humour.

Sometimes, our products and humour work really well together. When responding to a video with Sofia Richie Grainge’s husband Elliot, people enjoyed that we weren’t hiding from the fact that some people find some of our products funny.

Vogue Business: What are some moments where the risk paid off?

We worked with [comedy creator] Mathilda Airlines last year. It’s very, very offbeat humour. That got 8.7 million views. After that, I thought, “This is going to work”. We’d had “making of” videos that have got millions of views, but really that’s not much of a risk, we just shot them in a way that felt more native to the platform where it’s shot on a phone rather than with really high-level production budgets. Even “making of” videos, we’ve been trying to find ways to make them fun. The most recent one we did for the Puzzle, we did it in time to the music. It’s satisfying to watch.

Vogue Business: A lot of luxury brands fear that leaning into TikTok culture doesn’t align with their positioning. Were you met with some internal apprehension when you first started?

We quite often do these sessions where we educate people in the company about different trends and different platforms. We did a whole presentation on TikTok where we were just showing the kinds of videos that resonate and the ones that don’t. After we did that presentation, we very clearly understood that the only way to be successful on TikTok was to make content that felt like it was native to TikTok and not too polished. And I think to me, any luxury brand that says “we can’t do that”, I just don’t think it’s true. I think it’s uncomfortable because it’s taking a bit of a risk, but it’s a process of trial and error. You can do stuff on TikTok in a way that feels native to the platform, which is fun and engaging but doesn’t feel cheap.

Vogue Business: The Loewe AW24 show is coming up. I know in the past you’ve had some viral show moments like when Taylor Russell wore a metal coat to SS24. How do fashion shows factor into your digital strategy?

We had a discussion after Covid ended about what we wanted to do. Looking at the data, there’s a reason why all brands are doing fashion shows. It’s because they are amazing content engines. It’s a moment where you can capture not only the collection itself but [also] so much amazing content with all of the guests. And they, in turn, share content themselves. The show period is the biggest period of the year for Loewe in terms of gaining new followers. Compared to our size, we still have comparatively low brand awareness, so everything we do is focused on getting the awareness of the brand out there.

Vogue Business: What plans have you got for Loewe’s digital strategy that you can share?

Instagram as a platform is really evolving. It used to be primarily image-based, and obviously, now it’s becoming more and more video-heavy as Meta realised they needed to be competing with TikTok. But at the same time, I feel like there’s a level of polish you need to have on Instagram that you shouldn’t have on TikTok. For me, it’s an exciting challenge to think about how we can take the work we’ve done for TikTok that’s been so successful and apply it to some kind of graphic short-form video on Instagram. It’s one of the reasons why I love doing this job. The media landscape is constantly evolving. Every single year, trying to figure out something new and different, how to be culturally relevant. It’s an exciting thing.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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