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Using the Talkwalker social media analytics platform, we’ll take a look at who wins when it comes to brand presence and share of voice, best use of a campaign hashtag, influencers, originality and the ‘Vogue factor’ in the run up to the big shows. Analysing data from the past 30 days gives us a nice window that includes Christmas and campaigns for new collections. And if you want to see how 10 giants of the luxury industry stack up against each other on social, take a look at our Luxury brand report which analyzes the social media activity of Chanel, Dior, Ferrari, Tag Heuer and more.
First off, let’s see where the conversation about Gucci and Prada brands is taking place.
The discourse about Gucci and Prada mostly takes place on Twitter and Instagram.
At 52.7%, the majority of the discussion about Prada and Gucci comes from Twitter, closely followed by Instagram with 41.9% over the past 30 days. This suggests that the discourse is based heavily on images, the key part of the online conversation about fashion. According to eMarketer, a staggering 96% of fashion brands have now adopted Instagram (even surpassing Twitter at 94%).
Keeping this in mind, let’s compare some of the key stats for the two brands.
Read our report on Luxury brands and social media
Round 1: Brand Presence Battle - Who Takes the Lead on Social?
For both brands, the last Saturday before Christmas was particularly busy on social media.
With a 64.7% share of voice and more than 1.8 million results over the past 30 days, Gucci has a consistently stronger brand presence than Prada, which generated just under one million results.
Interestingly, the conversation seems to follow the same general direction. Both brands experienced a sharp increase in results in the run up to Christmas, with the last Saturday before Christmas being an especially busy day for both on social media. But the correlation continued through the first half of January, and shows just how much these two luxury brands are part of the same online fashion conversation.
In terms of brand presence, Gucci bags a clear win over Prada.
Gucci 1 - Prada 0
Round 2: Social Media Buzz around the Spring/Summer 2016 Collections
New collections are the pillars of the fashion calendar, and it’s no wonder that luxury brands put a lot of effort into promoting their new lines. Using the Talkwalker Hashtag tracking IQ App, we decided to take a look at how the brands’ Instagram and Twitter hashtag campaigns for their spring and summer 2016 collections performed on social - it’s #PradaSS16 vs #GucciSS16!
The curve for Prada's SS16 hashtag is relatively steady, while Gucci's spiked.
While Prada’s hashtag generated a more steady curve of results on Instagram and Twitter over the course of two weeks, Gucci again takes a lead due to several distinctive spikes in their results when they promoted their campaign heavily and got mentions from influencers. Boosted by their generally higher share of voice, Gucci wins another round in our fashion feud with almost 900k engagements, a better reach and more overall results.
The most popular post for the #GucciSS16 campaign came from their Instagram account.
Gucci 2 - Prada 0
Round 3: Which brand gets more engagements from its influencers?
The impact influencers can have on social media can’t be denied. On Instagram, fashion influencer Zoella Zeebo has as many followers (6.9m) as the official brand accounts of Gucci and Prada (6.9m and 6.7m followers respectively), which makes her an incredibly powerful force. Let’s take a look at some influencers that helped spread the message on social media for Gucci and Prada - and see which brand got the most engagements from its influencers.
For Gucci, Chiara Ferragni sports an impressive potential reach of more than 5.3m people and her two mentions of Gucci over the past month have created over 100k engagements.
Chiara Ferragni has more than 5m followers on Instagram, compared to Gucci's 6m.
For Prada, Instagram user Arielle Noa Charnas came in at the top with a reach of 780k users with her post below generating 11.7k engagements.
Prada's most popular influencer post came from Arielle Noa Charnas.
While both brands have influencers posting on their behalf and reaching out to the wider community, Gucci once again manages to grab the point as they’ve managed to get the more popular influencer to post about them.
It’s Gucci 3 - Prada 0!
Round 4: The brand with the most innovative social media strategy is… Gucci
Taking a closer look at their recent campaigns, it becomes clear that neither Gucci or Prada are straying too far from the beaten path with their day-to-day content. Their highly curated, image-heavy posts are clearly intended to be shared by their followers and to serve as a source of inspiration.
Both Prada and Gucci use images a lot to make their content more engaging.
However, Gucci has been praised by WWD and marketingmag.com.au for its forward thinking social media strategy, covering multiple channels in several markets while using different types of content. With a focus on providing a mobile-friendly user experience and providing dedicated apps for its users, Gucci definitely has the edge over Prada in this category.
Gucci 4 - Prada 0
Round 5: The Vogue Factor - Which Brand Gets the Most Mentions?
For the last round in our fashion duel, we’ll take a look at the gold standard of the fashion world: Vogue. Being a part of the conversation in leading industry publications is extremely important (not just to luxury labels), so let’s see which brand scrapes more mentions from the @voguemagazine Twitter account.
Prada got 105 mentions on Vogue on a single day.
The tweet promoted a Prada article on Vogue's website.
Again, it’s Gucci that’s ahead with more mentions overall, but Prada gained more mentions from the account on a single day, as Vogue posted about Prada’s next generation of celebrity models - it’s a draw!
Final count: Gucci 4 - Prada 1
Conclusion
After five rounds, Gucci has emerged as the clear winner in our luxury fashion social media battle. Starting with a generally higher share of voice, Gucci is very effective at promoting its hashtags across multiple channels, and comes across as the more innovative brand of the two.
Using Talkwalker social media analytics, brands can understand how their performance compares to key industry rivals and benchmark their social media performance using a variety of metrics. Get in touch with us today to find out how you can conduct your own social media analysis!
To find out more, download our luxury brands case study!
Title image adapted from Flickr user fervent-adepte-de-la-mode
