The Case of Gucci's Digital Overexposure
- Juliette Chloe' Trifiro'
- Oct 29
- 15 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Years of digital overexposure have decreased Gucci’s desirability and financial value; however, is the new Demna era going to revitalize the brand or break it further?
Note from author: this is more of a long read, but definitely worth it!
Accessibility vs Exclusivity
Luxury brands offer both tangible and intangible value; both are key for long term brand equity (Kapferer, 2012). Accessibility in a luxury context refers to how easily consumers can purchase the good, from a cultural, physical and financial perspective. To an extent, limited accessibility amplifies the perceived value and status of the desired good (De Barnier, Falcy and Valette-Florence, 2012). Instead, aspiration refers to one’s psychological and social desire to embody the qualities of a luxury brand, to improve their image and social status. Marketing to aspirational consumers is key for long term growth, as they account for 60% of the luxury goods market, as they spend €2,000 or less per year (D’Arpizio et al., 2025). Brands need to nurture these potential customers by educating and elevating their brand hierarchy and likelihood to purchase, through engagement, storytelling and brand experiences (D’Auria et al., 2024). In fact, Kapferer (2012) suggests that marketing based on aspiration and the brand’s intangible value, not only increases brand equity, but customers attach themselves to the brand and its prestige. In practical terms, this means switching away from marketing scarcity to marketing “abundant rarity”.
To an extent, the balance between accessibility and exclusivity is not achieved but it is not mutually exclusive (Tandon, 2025). The key is to be accessible through digital channels and product segmentation which sustains brand desirability and loyalty. In fact, the main purpose of social media is to engage with potential long-term buyers. Nevertheless, if the brand is overexposed, it can lead to the dilution of the core brand (Ibid). Overexposure and improper product positioning is caused by brands favouring accessibility rather than exclusivity, thus luxury brands becoming masstige brands. This phenomenon quoted by Rodrigues and Borges (2020) is the ‘democratisation of luxury brands’, which sees brands such as Gucci mass-marketed to favour profitability and their marker of prestige and scarcity being diluted and, in some cases, lost.
As such marketing in the digital era still needs to use traditional luxury markers (heritage, scarcity and price). Marketing based on heritage is one of the strongest strategies for luxury brands to follow, as heritage can reinforce and build emotional connection and increase the customers willingness to accept higher prices (Wiedmann et al., 2012). Marketing revolves around storytelling the brand’s origin, craftsmanship, and visual and symbolic cues that reinforce tradition (Siu, 2025). Using scarcity in "after sales" marketing is used to provoke social signalling and increase the brands perceived value and thus its exclusivity, for instances the infamous Birkin (Olga Nechaeva et al., 2024). Finally, price is a strategic marker for luxury brands, as it signals prestige and superior quality, causing customer loyalty and boosting brand equity (Raut et al., 2025). Whilst price is set to cut out customers, paradoxically customers have a positive perception towards high prices, due to associating high prices with higher satisfaction and a sign of luxury (Parguel, Delécolle and Valette-Florence, 2015).
Research Methodology
Secondary research and social listening tools such as YouTube, Financial Times, Reddit and LinkedIn comments will be used to explore the case. Whilst a meta data analysis is required to determine whether the marketing strategy or other internal and external factors caused the downturn, using public data, such as financial statements and social media metrics is useful for understanding public sentiment and purchase behaviour. OpenAI (2025) ChatGPT will be used to graph models and assumptions, which has proven useful in bypassing paywalls and thus being able to construct previous years media metrics.
Gucci’s Current Situation
Gucci’s financial performance in Q2 2025 saw a 25% decline in sales mainly driven by reduced demand in the Asia-Pacific region and tourism-dependent markets (Guilbault, 2025). Gucci’s expansion, and the resulting market saturation may have diminished the brand’s exclusivity, making it less resilient to macro headwinds (Ibid). Further trends such as 'quiet luxury' have further decreased demand for conspicuous brands, like Gucci. The luxury market has seen a decrease in small leather goods sales and an increase in designer jewellery (Felsted, 2025). To an extent, external factors have caused the downturn in sales and revenue, however the following analysis will examine how digital marketing strategies have decreased desirability.
Pinault, Kering’s CEO, Gucci’s parent company, shares “we have grown … Gucci, by leveraging their core element of desirability. That has meant relying largely on the aspirational part of the market. So now, while protecting this customer segment…we aim at better penetrating more elevated clientele” (WARC, 2025), but it was the actual customer sentiment?
From a brand equity perspective, Gucci, held a leadership position during its peak from 2018 and 2022. However, due to internal decisions and shift in luxury trends, Gucci lost its brand stature, indicating a shift to a unrealised position, as shown in Graph I. Brand strength remains high because of Gucci’s history and high spend on influencer marketing.
Graph I: Gucci’s Brand Asset Valuator from 2018 to 2025
Gucci’s Current Marketing Strategy
As G-Co Agency (2024) discloses, Gucci’s marketing budget in 2024 was roughly $567 million, around 11% of Gucci’s revenue. Gucci heavily invests in engaging content that is relevant to the consumer, pulling them to purchase; in fact, ¼ of the budget goes directly to advertising spend (Mediaradar, no date). The better half is split in celebrity/influencer related costs, AI customer analysis, distribution and the relevant marketing assets, and reaching digital-savvy customers through its “social-first advertising strategy” (Pulse Advertising, 2025). A strategy that has worked in the past, as 50% of its customers are Millennials and Gen Z (Ibid).
Most of Gucci’s followers are aspirational consumers who engage with the brand for cultural relevance rather than immediate purchases, which is common with luxury brands as these consumers connect with brands through iconic campaigns rather than transactional intent McKinsey & Company (2022). Gucci’s feed features high-impact visuals, celebrity endorsements, and fashion show coverage.
Table II demonstrates Gucci’s vast digital accessibility, appealing to a broad consumer base. Based on industry benchmarks, roughly 260,000 to 780,000 people, are likely to be near-term purchasers within the next 12 months (Hootsuite, 2024), implying that up to 96.5% of its followers are aspirational followers.
Table II: Distribution of Gucci’s Instagram followers
In terms of brand equity, its followers demonstrate high levels of brand awareness as its one of the most followed luxury brands on Instagram; however, its actual content shows a brand that is struggling to engage its customers. As content does not revolve around scarcity or heritage, the focus is brand esteem rather than relevance or differentiation. With OpenAI’s (2025) ChatGPT expertise, Instagram’s following, engagement and revenue have been mapped out, in relative terms, as shown in Graph II.
Graph II: Mapping Revenue, Instagram following and engagement
Graph 2 shows followers rose steadily from 2019 to 2024 (+66.6%), reflecting sustained digital reach growth (HypeAuditor, 2025). Revenue was more volatile, declining to 79.4% by 2024 (Guilbault, 2025). Social engagement declined 67% by 2024, indicating lower interaction per follower despite overall audience expansion. The trend suggests follower growth did not translate proportionally into either engagement or revenue. Instead, low engagement similarly reflects Gucci’s revenue downturn, which might imply Gucci’s loss in relevance.
TikTok
Gucci embraced TikTok early on and has mastered the exclusive Italian slow living summer aesthetic in its videos, fostering aspirational desirability with its digital savvy audience, as seen in Figure 1.
Figure I: Gucci’s latest TikTok videos
Nevertheless, engagement remains low for TikTok standards, 0.62% compared to its 2% standard (HypeAuditor, 2025). Possibly because Gucci is mixing its core values across platforms rather than adapting its message across platforms. People do not associate posts that use heritage and “abundant rarity” with Gucci, they associate Gucci with its viral challenges and its playful manner. The reason why the challenge was successful is because everyone recognised Gucci’s differentiating factor resulting in high brand stature. Therefore, Gucci was bound to lose brand stature as it tied its differentiator to the designer rather than the brand.
Roblox
Gucci has been trying to raise its relevance with its digital-savvy audience by partnering with Roblox, a gaming platform were Gen Z ‘hangs-out’. From 2021 to 2023 it launched a series of immersive virtual experiences where gamers where able to buy digital fashion items ranging from $8-$18.One of the campaigns garnered 20 million visits, of which 17% of gamers that purchased a digital item, bought a real item within 90 days, and 28% of gamers visited Gucci’s e-commerce after engaging with the digital experience (Aryal, 2025). Although, results indicated a successful campaign, associating themselves with Roblox could have reduce the brands images.
Figure II Gucci Roblox Outfits
The Case of Gucci’s Digital Overexposure
The Accenture Brand Desirability Framework, cited in Standish, Benichou and Galante (2024), can be used to analyse Gucci’s desirability, which will help identify whether Gucci’s digital exposure impacted its exclusivity image. Table III tracks customer sentiment online, it’s quite clear that customers do not view Gucci as a luxurious brand, by standard terms.
Table III: Applying the Accenture Brand Desirability Framework, cited in Standish, Benichou and Galante (2024) to Gucci
The main theme emerging from public sentiment are for the most part negative. What sticks out are sentiments of boredom and disinterest. Years of exposure have depleted Gucci’s brand image. Gucci has mass populated its brand and products to the extent that high net worth buyers do not want to be associated with the brand, meaning that Pinault’s strategy is going to require major internal operational overturns. What sticks out is that even people recognise its heritage value, would not buy the brand today, preferring vintage pieces, which not only hold aspirational value but refer to a time when Gucci’s perception was of luxury. Gucci should leverage its history and past, to recoup these customers. One customer says is better: “Gucci’s future hinges on a delicate balance: honouring its rich design heritage while making itself culturally vital again” (Tong, 2025).
Clearly, Gucci missed the mark, it became too abundant without making itself rare. Its previous marketing strategy of attracting digital savvy customers by meeting them at each touchpoint made the brand too accessible without retaining exclusivity, which in times of economic uncertainty and high purchasing power decreased Gucci’s overall desirability. Targeting Millennials and Gen Z was a strategy that preferred short term profitability over long-term hierarchy growth as this audience tends to buy mostly entry products (Eastman et al., 2010), substantially below the €2,000 threshold, thus it needed to constantly acquire new customers whilst also trying to build customer rapport. The Roblox initiative raised Gucci’s awareness with the younger generation, but it does not necessarily translate into future purchases.
They have targeted customers at the low end of the aspirational spectrum and with increasing prices each year they have out priced their aspirational customers, as seen in Table IV. Without marketing based on heritage nor scarcity signalling, Gucci lost its leadership position. As such, Gucci cannot impose a price premium strategy anymore and they can’t reduce prices either as that would further decrease Gucci’s value.
Table IV: Customers perception on price
What has made LVMH’s strategy so successful rather than Kering’s, i.e. Gucci, is their ability to translate its core value across different platforms, engaging different audiences but keeping the message relevant. The core values of these brands, and LVMH, remain the traditional luxury markers such as heritage, scarcity and price. Thus, LVMH will always be able to move along the BAV as they have innate ability to balance accessibility and exclusivity.
If Gucci wants to target a high-end customer base, they will have to enact a companywide strategy. From a strategic marketing perspective, the main priorities are to rebalance exclusivity and accessibility and change customer perspective.
Gucci will have to simultaneously leverage its 100-year heritage with high level digital campaigns and create physical scarcity to signal status, value and quality. Is Demna the right person to do this?
Demna’s Gucci
In September 2025 Gucci forwent the traditional catwalk with a campaign aimed at increasing brand relevance, but not differentiation. Demna decided created designs based on Gucci's brand archetypes, targeting its' diverse customer demographic.
Figure III The Tiger short film cover
The Tiger a short film directed by Oscar winning Spike Jonze was incredibly received from the fashion world. In practical terms, Launchmetrics has calculated “the value of Gucci’s mentions … [which] was $14 million” (Felsted, 2025). However, Google Trends worldwide searches for “Gucci”, Figure IV, reveal the campaign did not increase overall brand relevance.
Figure IV: Online Interest for Gucci
Whilst the term “Demna Gucci”, skyrocketed at the time of the launch, Figure V, the campaign was credited with increased store traffic in the United States, after years of slow sales. Gucci’s New York store traffic was up 19% and in Los Angeles up 53% (Hummel and Spencer, 2025).
Figure V: Online Interest for Demna Gucci
Overall, Demna’s collection was a step in the right direction as it vitalised Gucci’s brand relevance. Nevertheless, is it enough to turn around its financial performance, and what about the never-ending balance between accessibility and exclusivity.
Sure, the campaign boosted store traffic, but there is no way to know whether these potential customers were new or old customers. Reacquiring old customers would signify an increase in brand stature and thus a slow ascend to a leadership position. If only new customers showed up that could signify an increase in accessibility rather than exclusivity. If little to no sales occurred during this period, Gucci has missed the mark with digital exposure and exclusivity.
Overall revenue for Q3 was -18% a slight improvement to Q2, in fact sales have increased from -25% in Q2 to -14% in Q3 (Kering, 2025). Demna's influence is only going to be seen in Q4 and Q1 of 2026, however whilst we await the verdict one question remain forefront:
What will happen when Demna eventually leaves Gucci, will the cycle ever end? Essentially how can luxury brands full proof themselves from fashion designers and external trends?
In the meantime, I can only offer some suggestions to Gucci's marketing team.
Gucci should focus on heritage revival by showcasing its craftsmanship and iconic design moments through curated campaigns, reinforcing exclusivity and authenticity. Through platform-specific storytelling, Gucci can refine its digital image, using Instagram for aspirational visuals, such as past images of Grace Kelly wearing Gucci, and TikTok for brand-relevant creativity. Using selective ways to release information will restore prestige by limiting mass-market associations. Finally, with invite-only teasers, Gucci can reintroduce mystery and spark intrigue. These marketing tactics can shift customer perception from overexposed to once again aspirational and regain trust and relevance from high-value clients.
To reach high-end customers at their preferred touchpoints, Gucci should invest in curated cultural salons, adapting Prada’s model to reflect Gucci’s heritage and unique style. Each event could gather a mix of opinion speakers in the field of art and music, where they discuss themes that surround Gucci’s heritage, such as Italian craftsmanship or its archival design, while introducing contemporary cultural collaborations. By limiting attendance to high-value clients and influential tastemakers, Gucci reinforces exclusivity, fosters authentic connections, and gains high-end editorial coverage. With the same tone and objective, Gucci should sponsor high-end sporting events, such as St. Moritz Winter Polo or Longines Cup due to Gucci’s heritage in the equestrian world.
For tasteful virality, Gucci can partner with Vogue to create a 10-part series shared via podcast and YouTube about Gucci’s history, fun facts and reviews of past collections. With the release of The Devil Wear Prada 2, Meryl Streep, leveraging her icon status, could host these videos. This partnership would create engaging content that educates and entertains, which will reintroduce Gucci’s heritage and creativity to a global audience.
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What a great read!