Challenge

Founded in 1858 in Paris, Boucheron has established itself as a small gem in the world of high jewellery thanks to its innovative, creative, and craftsman spirit. After a quick rebound from the pandemic, this category is now flourishing: branded high jewellery will be on the rise with an expected compound annual growth rate of 10% in the next three years.

This expected growth can be explained not only by the booming Asian luxury market, but also by the growing demand for men’s jewellery. This segment was valued at $6.5 billion in 2021, up 17% compared to 2020.

And this is no surprise: the jewellery category is deeply impacted by a new cultural shift towards gender fluidity. Just have a look at red carpet events: many male celebrities like Harry Styles or BTS are challenging conventions by proudly wearing jewellery.

Brand:
Entered by:

Our competitors were already showing early momentum in this matter. Niche brands like Veert, established brands like Cartier and even luxury fashion brands like Louis Vuitton were logically accelerating towards a more inclusive representation of jewellery wearers.

Unfortunately, Boucheron has historically been a women-centric luxury jewellery Maison, from models’ gender to ad targeting. No wonder luxury consumers were not associating Boucheron with gender fluidity. Even in France, 81% luxury consumers who were aware of Boucheron didn’t know that the brand creates jewellery that can be worn by both women and men.

As a result, Boucheron was losing cultural relevance by being out of touch with new luxury consumers’ expectations. Moreover, Boucheron was not addressing the growing male luxury consumer’s base.

To tackle these challenges, we set up two interconnected objectives:

  • Objective one: Change Boucheron’s brand perception, from women-centric to genderless.
  • Objective two: Increase brand awareness among a male audience to drive penetration in the long term.

Content Solution

The cultural shift towards gender fluidity leads to an evolution of people’s expectations. During our exploration of the Boucheron core audience called the “Jewellery Lovers”, we discovered that they differ from the rest of luxury consumers from a values and attitude standpoint.

Indeed, within the nine different markets covered by this campaign, male and female “Jewellery Lovers” displayed a higher cultural curiosity (+15 points vs. luxury consumers), a more progressive attitude towards changes in society (+12 pts), and a very strong interest in using fashion & jewellery to express their personality (+25 pts).

We knew that the new genderless brand positioning had the potential to resonate deeply with our core audience. And from a creative angle, for the first time ever in the history of the Maison, a male model will be included in the campaign. It was a big step forward in becoming a genderless brand as Boucheron was finally embracing masculinity. However, creative assets were split between sex: the male model on one side and the female model on the other. Never both models were included together.

That’s where media came into play to reunite both genders. Our strategy: establish Boucheron at the intersection of genders by playing duality in media.

Media/Content Amplification Solution

To make a quick and lasting impact in our audience’s minds, a strong channel consistency was mandatory. That’s why we used one singular media principle: every channel needed to be thought of with duality in mind to show both male and female creative assets at the same time.

This media principle allowed the flexibility required to make the most of each channel’s inherent strength.

  • Duality through placement: we leveraged the duo placement capabilities of print newspapers & magazines, out-of-home, file sharing platform WeTransfer, and direct display on affinity websites.
  • Duality through sequencing: we leveraged the sequencing capabilities of online video and social media platforms. For example: on YouTube, we used video ad sequencing to show a series of two videos, firstly with the male model followed by the female one.
  • Duality through innovation: we leveraged the latest OOH lenticular technology of JCDecaux to merge two creative assets, pushing the intersection of genders to the maximum.
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Campaign impressions worldwide.
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Boucheron brand uplift among male audiences.
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Increase in share of online search after the campaign.

Results

Despite having only launched the first wave of this global brand campaign and that a long-term measurement approach is needed to evaluate the brand perception and awareness changes, we already have exciting and promising campaign results to share:

Objective one: Change Boucheron’s brand perception, from women-centric to genderless.

  • The campaign has registered more than 1 billion impressions worldwide.
  • 92.5% of the reached audience has been exposed to both male and female assets simultaneously.
  • More luxury consumers are now aware that Boucheron creates jewellery that can be worn by both women and men: +5 points in Asia (China, Japan, South Korea combined) and + 6 points in France.

Objective two: Increase brand awareness among a male audience.

  • The campaign grew awareness of Boucheron among a male audience: +13% lift in Boucheron brand awareness among exposed male audiences.
  • The share of males searching for “Boucheron” on Google continues to grow in eight countries since the launch of the campaign. In April 2022, the male share of search was at 17%.
  • During the campaign, in September 2022, the male share of search was at 23%, and in February 2023, nearly a third (29%) of people searching for Boucheron on Google are now male. This represents a sharp increase of 12 points (or +70.6%) between April 2022 and February 2023.

More Information

Boucheron
iProspect Global