Trend Alert: Louis Vuitton + Dolls

I've made my point clear in my first post. The digital momentum of a project (or of a brand) is the product of its mass and velocity.
If you remember, I had also told you that it would take more time & energy for a car to reach a higher speed, therefore a larger momentum. What does it mean in digital marketing? That it takes time for brands to create authentic voices online and that they should accumulate a series of similar projects in their portfolio to create consistency in their 'mass'.
This is exactly what Louis Vuitton has been doing with dolls for a while now: accumulating projects of a similar nature in order to create consistency & coherency in their digital marketing strategy.

Let's refresh our memory & take a look at Louis Vuitton's use of 'the dolls trend' in digital marketing.

1. Walking in Fabrizio Viti's Shoes:

Part 1: Louis Vuitton's shoe style director, Viti has been collecting dolls since he was 3 years old and today he owns a collection of 500 pieces in total. In the short interview he does for New & Now, he reveals the importance of dolls in the creative process saying that he uses them as a canvas for experiementation and once he did a custom shoe for one particular dolls that he ended up liking so much that he enlargened it to a human scale. Needless to say, that shoe was the season's must have.
Part 2: In the second part of the interview, the brand explains how the shoe department is connected to the world of dolls as the workshop is Fiesso D'Artico in Italy is not only responsible for the creation of Louis Vuitton's shoes but also of fabricating their miniature versions for Fabrizio Viti's private doll collection. The article's supported by a fun, viral stop motion animation starring Barbie with different LV shoes. The video earned around 111k views on Youtube.

2. LOVE Magazine Cover

One of the eight covers for LOVE Magazine's Fall 2010 issue was Buela The Mannequin, a doll lent by Louis Vuitton's shoe style director Fabrizio Viti. The cover was shot by Mert & Marcus. The doll was referred to as 'The Louis Vuitton doll' in various articles (one example here).

3.  Le Bal du Siècle for Lafayette:

Galeries Lafayette in Paris asked Louis Vuitton to dress its Christmas windows in order to mark its 100th anniversary. The theme was 'the Ball of the Century' and the end result featured dancing puppet animals, hand-painted dolls dressed up in Louis Vuitton, musical instruments and LV trunks all inspired by the world of travel. The windows were photographed by many bloggers who got in line to dedicate a post to this initiative (see one example here). The brand shared a 'behind the scenes' video with their fans on different social media networks which earned 45k views on Youtube.




4. The Louis Vuitton Paper Dolls:

The brand combined their RTW icons with the SS 13 collection to show how pieces can be mixed and matched to invent new outfits. Four looks styled by Hersov are presented as downloadable paper dolls designed by the illustrator Kerrie Hess on the brand's New & Now site. There's also a video showing Hersov at work on Youtube.
The fans are supposed to print these dolls, create different looks and share them on their social media networks with the hashtag #LVMixMatch. Louis Vuitton will share their favourite entries on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

One more question: do you remember who Louis Vuitton dressed for 2012 Bafta Awards? Yes, Miss Piggy. Can't remember? Read here.