Living without social networks is the new status symbol

In a media landscape in which all brands operate like Kardashian, there will always be one that wants to become a Greta Garbo. Disappear from the public eye, leave a halo of legend and be seen with only one hand on his face in a stolen photo walking through Manhattan. More than one digital strategist and

will have had that idea –what if the best and most radical presence on networks was not to be on the networks?– but few have dared to propose it in a meeting. After all, it is a high-risk move.

Just one year ago, Bottega Veneta, the ultra-luxury Italian brand that has always based its image on the quality of its products and the craftsmanship of its intrecciato – the leather braiding technique for which it is famous – announced that He deleted his Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts. In fact, they didn't announce it, they did something more theatrical and more consistent with that movement: they deleted them without saying so, so that if someone searched for @BottegaVeneta they simply found: sorry, this page is not available. So, it was interpreted as a very calculated strategic move by the team of Daniel Lee, the then creative director.

Rachel Tashjian, the oracle of menswear and author of the industry's most sought after – by invitation only – newsletter,

, speculated that this could be the ultimate act in quiet luxury, thereby brand “would circulate only through the word of mouth of fans and would move like a secret through the industry, with the key pieces appearing organically by the will of the consumer instead of by corporate imposition”. Industry analyst Pamela Danziger warned in

that this could be the beginning of a trend, because for ultra-luxury, presence does not always translate into sales.

Christophe Caïs, founder of the Customer Experience Group agency, which works in the luxury sector and has had Bottega Veneta among its clients, wrote that what the brand was doing was turning its back on "aggressive competition for algorithmic nepotism." in which all companies are involved.

Designer Daniel Lee, former creative director of Bottega Veneta.Photo: Bottega Veneta

And yet, when it was announced eleven months later that Daniel Lee was leaving Bottega Veneta, those same analysts who had applauded the daring strategy wondered if that might not be one of the reasons for his departure. “While many fashion watchers appreciated this challenge to industry digital norms, others were confused by the strategy. The firm found itself unusually reliant on a fan-run account, @newbottega, for

. There was a lot of talk at dinners during Paris Fashion Week about the effectiveness of that decision,” Tashjian also wrote. And now that the brand has a new creative director, Matthieu Blazy, it is not ruled out that he could return to the networks. If it does, it won't be as notorious as when Céline lost her accent and returned to the networks when she passed control of the house of Phoebe Philo, a famous digital hermit who once said that her greatest aspiration would be not to appear in Google searches, to the very exposure-hungry Hedi Slimane. Lee, by the way, is a disciple of Philo and his former collaborator.

Whether they recover the networks or not "will depend on what the numbers say," predicts Isabel Martínez, director of the Master's Degree in Creative Direction that is taught at the IED in Barcelona. She herself has 626,000 followers on Instagram under her digital self, @isabelitavirtual. “When Céline decides not to be in networks, she makes a full-fledged statement. It is a way to stand out from the rest. It was brave, but risky. They then claimed that it was because they believed that the garments should touch. It's like saying that only if you go to a physical store can you come into contact with the brand's universe. But not being in networks implies resignations. Giving up making profits from direct sales, giving up being remembered, giving up the creation of a community led by the brand itself and reaching new audiences”.

Perhaps that is why not so many luxury brands have dared to take the step, however high and differentiating it may be.

In fact, even Bottega Veneta has maintained social networks all this time in China, where between 37 and 40% of hyper-luxury customers come from.

The figure is expected to reach 50% before 2025.

Lorde during a performance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in November 2021. Dimitrios Kambouris (Getty Images for Solomon R. Gugg)

What does exist are some brands, not necessarily from the high-end sector, that abandon social networks not because they consider them vulgar but because they believe they promote toxic values.

There, the gesture is more similar to that of people who leave Twitter and announce it in a tweet, which is usually the one that gets them the most 'likes' of their entire digital life.

The cosmetics firm Lush, which has always championed its political activism on environmental, LGBTQ or animal welfare issues (despite the fact that it belongs to the multinational Procter & Gamble) also announced at the end of November that it was leaving the networks. The brand even put a price on its strategy. He pointed out that it was going to cost them $13 million a year to do that, but that seemed like a fair price to them if it was promoting the well-being of their customers. The person in charge of the Internet brand strategy, Jack Constantine, explained in

that the Facebook Case, that is, the internal leaks that ended with Mark Zuckerberg's company having to change its name to Meta, were the final blow that led them to abandon, above all, Instagram.

The founder of the brand, Mark Constantine, told

. "We're talking about suicides, not pimples or whether someone should go blonde [Constantine refers to the internal Facebook study that was leaked in which the company warned of the relationship between the relationship between Instagram, the self-perception of adolescents and the suicide]. How can we say that we are a conscientious business if we see that and do not care. We want to create safe spaces where you leave feeling better than when you arrived”. For him, networks have come to mean the opposite. “

without sense, hypertension, anxiety”. The brand is not entirely gone. It maintains LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter to deal with customer complaints, and YouTube, which is perceived as creative content.

For Janira Planes, a person who even defines herself in her Twitter bio as "extremely online" and who analyzes network phenomena in her

, Truffle Season, and in her section on the

of Radio Primavera Sound, any gesture of digital asceticism is somewhat difficult to understand, even by a brand, but he believes that Lush is consistent with its positioning and, in some way, effective as an act of communication.

"Right now we are talking about the brand," he says.

“If they are selling bath bombs, self-care and wellness, that goes hand in hand with the brand not overwhelming you and stressing you out.

They are admitting that everything brands put out is spam.

And also, in the beauty sector a lot of insecurity is generated.

Their networks are full of perfect faces and bodies.”

However, he says, he does not believe that a brand with ethical principles has to resign itself to fleeing the networks and cites the example of another firm in the same sector, Tropicals, whose content is almost informative,

Actress Kristen Stewart doesn't have an Instagram account, according to her, because she doesn't need one.

Getty

Planes also finds what Balenciaga does interesting, the periodic cleanups that consist of erasing all their history, as teenagers usually do, and leaving only six or seven Instagram posts that have to do with the current project.

“I understand that they can afford it.

They have the privilege of being able to reinvent themselves.”

The other brands: the famous

When someone very famous – another way of being a brand – leaves Instagram or simply does not open it, they rarely give that simple explanation that Planes comments on. Only Kirsten Stewart answered that on one occasion when she was asked why she didn't have networks. “Because I don't need it,” he said. Such sincerity is unusual. The most common is a Lorde explanation. In a dialogue with her friend Cazzie David in

magazine

, she said that she had disappeared for years from Instagram because she felt “that she was losing her free will” and that she felt “enormous amounts of stress about the planet, systemic racism and police brutality. ”.

Usually, if a celebrity leaves the networks it is in response to a controversy: Cardi B has deleted her Instagram several times, Lizzo ran off Twitter, Pete Davidson deleted his Instagram when he broke up with Ariana Grande and said he was depressed reading the comments. about his appearance, Alec Baldwin has pulverized his digital presence after the accident that ended the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. There is also the strategic periodic erasure – the Balenciaga system – that Taylor Swift popularized and allows the famous to present a blank page every time they decide to change their image and art direction. And, of course, those who have never entered networks, at least officially, such as Ryan Gosling, George Clooney or Emma Stone. At that level of old school fame,not having platforms does not prevent them from signing contracts with Tag Heuer, Nespresso or L'Oreal respectively. What brands lose in exposure – unlike other of their ambassadors, they will not repost content related to their campaigns to their followers – they gain in peace of mind. They don't have to be afraid of getting in trouble for a wrong post.

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