Can luxury brands meme their way into Gen Z’s heart?

Has your feed seen a lot of a certain tomato? The “Loewe tomato,” as it has come to be known after gaining virality, is the most recent example of luxury brands participating in meme culture. During the golden era of social media, receiving a comment on your post from a ubiquitous national brand was a pure, unadulterated dopamine hit. Nowadays, however, people have grown weary of overly familiar behaviour, and brands are struggling to adjust their tone.

When it comes to brand identity on social media, the luxury market in particular has their work cut out for them. Balancing a majority Gen-Z audience on TikTok, while maintaining their authority (and oftentimes, self-seriousness) as a storied label can create some murky territory for dealing with Zoomers. “The luxury fashion game has always included tapping into new markets–primarily in the international sense–and in the current markets, forming a relationship with the consumer of tomorrow before they fully age into having that buying power,” says Daisy Alioto, CEO of Dirt Media, a newsletter-turned-media company that dissects all things pop culture.

Some brands have massively succeeded in their attempts. On Mother’s Day, Marc Jacobs collaborated with Sylvanian Drama, a TikTok account that uses Calico Critters to enact soap-level drama that makes the Real Housewives pale in comparison. The Marc Jacobs team commissioned a video in which one Critter shoplifts the Marc Jacobs Tote Bag, but is released because it’s Mother’s Day. But when she gets home, she is greeted by an intervention, and only agrees to stay in rehab in exchange for the Tote Bag.

The Sylvanian Drama video isn’t the first time Marc Jacobs has turned to experimental creators that are beloved by Gen-Z, nor was it the last. After a video of a couple dancing to the Tinashe song “Nasty” went viral (and launched the phrase “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” into public consciousness), the team pounced, getting the couple to recreate the video for them. “Marc Jacobs already has [the youth-oriented clothing line] Heaven, so the idea of doing something young doesn’t strike me as anachronistic,” Alioto says, comparing it to Coach’s circular economy venture, Coachtopia.

Loewe has taken a similar approach to capturing virality. While the label may lack the audacity of Marc Jacobs’s social strategy, it has harnessed the niche corners of the internet for its own gain. Poking fun at the “is it cake?” videos that plague For You pages, Loewe showed their signature bags alongside amateur cake recreations, inviting users to guess which was real. Ahead of the 2024 Met Gala, the Spanish house invited their guests to participate in the “passing the phone” challenge. “Loewe and memes is not something I would have seen for them five years ago but they do have the younger collaborations, [for example the Spirited Away capsule] with Miyazaki, that show an understanding of the power of fandom,” Alioto says. By asking celebrities to take part in a trend that everyone can do, it not only shows an innate social media fluency but creates a feeling of access to celebrities. Recently, a tomato became the object of fascination for Loewe loyalists, with one X user deeming her grocery item as “the most Loewe” object, which caught the attention of the internet at large. Soon enough, Anderson himself posted a bag shaped as said Loewe tomato, captioning it as “Loewe, meme to reality”.

Sometimes, however, attempts to connect with a younger audience fall flat. In an attempt to market their Ricco bag, Alexander Wang hired celebrity impersonators to unbox the purse. But the supercut of faux Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Kylie Jenner, and Beyoncé created inherent associations with fakeness. On social media, reactions were largely negative. “yikes. tried a marc jacobs move but executed it very fittingly for alexander wang. hang up the towel,” one user commented.

As brands try—with varying levels of success—to adapt to the ever-changing social media landscape, Alioto says that this is just the beginning of luxury marketing in the era of rapid social media proliferation. “We haven’t fully seen this playbook enacted in the total attention and context collapse environment we have now where nothing stays on TikTok or stays on a billboard in one city without being photographed and brought to a feed of people around the world,” she adds. “And that’s always going to be a risk.”

This article first appeared on vogue.com

Also read:

Luxury will see India as a prime market in 2024

Jimmy Choo announces Princess Gauravi Kumari as their new brand ambassador

Instagram photo dumps simply underscore Gen Z’s search for authenticity