Jo Malone London is bringing its London-based town house online.
Today, the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc.-owned company will introduce digital “The Talk of the Townhouse” — billed by the brand as a digital platform that will open the doors “both literally and figuratively” to Jo Malone London.
Named after the Georgian town house in London’s Marylebone that serves as the brand’s global headquarters, content will showcase many of the British artists, singers and influencers the brand regularly collaborates with, including Poppy Delevingne, Karen Elson, Leith Clark, Sophie Dahl, Bay Garnett and Rose Uniacke. The Talk of the Townhouse also provides detailed information on the scents and perfumers behind every one of Jo Malone London’s scents, gives monthly horoscopes and shares tastemaker hosting tips.
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A corresponding print edition coincides with the rollout, which will be given out in all freestanding stores across the U.K. and North America, in key transportation and urban hubs in London and New York City and hotels in New York, London and Los Angeles. Additionally, a printed copy will be included with every online order placed on jomalonelondon.com for the next two months.
“When we’re launching a program we [typically] do a press trip and tell one simple story — but there’s much more…[and] we want to express this through our classic communication tools,” said Jean-Guillaume Trottier, global brand president of Jo Malone London. “It’s really 360 degrees and it was needed — because today when you see the communication of brands it’s all over the place.”
Welding the digital platform with the physical manifestation of Talk of the Townhouse, he explained, was key in touching as many customers — and wherever they might be engaging with the brand — as possible. The content platform’s unified brand message will live simultaneously on Jo Malone’s e-commerce site, on all its social channels as well as in-store. Trottier said the team is still figuring out what the frequency of a print edition might look like.
Tonight, Delevingne and Elson are hosting a party in London at the Jo Malone London Townhouse, where the corresponding print issue of the “The Talk of the Townhouse” will be handed out to guests.
Trottier called the project another layer to the brand’s digital strategy.
“All of the content will also play out across social media. We very much see it as the heartbeat of the content ecosystem, which will effectively disseminate all content across digital and social channels and in-store,” he said.
According to data from Socialbakers, in the last year, the brand has chalked up a 63 percent increase in Facebook fans, which could be attributed to a 291 percent jump in posting frequency on the platform. On Instagram, relative followers increased by more than 105 percent.
It’s also sizable digital marketing initiative for the brand, which is said to be among the fastest-growing companies within the Lauder portfolio, with year-over-year growth nearing 40 percent. Jo Malone London surpassed $1 billion in retail sales for the first time last year.
“What we had in mind was that it was more than [just] the web,” Trottier added. “It was clearly to be able to create a lot of content and stories for the brand…and now with our organization internally we can broadcast dramatically — and much faster — our storytelling cross-platform.”