Ad of the Month - LOEWE
We do love a good fashion ad. At Human Made Machine, we have written about the aspirational element of luxury before in our May Ad of the Month, but there’s nothing like being surrounded by Black Friday and Cyber Monday activity to make these ads top of mind again.
This month, we want to spotlight an exceptional ad in this category: LOEWE. Their winning formula makes the handbag the story, rather than an accessory to it. We’ll talk about how they went a step further than many others in their category, using visual and sound cues to communicate the premium quality associated with their products. This is especially important for a company like LOEWE, which has lower US brand awareness than some of the other big brand names that already have strong associations with luxury.
At Human Made Machine, we help you understand whether your creative will be effective with your target audience. This is crucial, since creatives contribute up to 70% of a campaign’s success. We test thousands of ads each month in realistic, simulated media environments. Our tests use the gold standard of control and exposed experiments to predict real-world impact.
How do you know the item is luxurious?
Luxury ads are usually about conveying a mood and an aspirational lifestyle. Many companies feature well-known stars or visual cues like fancy cars and houses, often with prominent logos if it is a well-known brand.
We’ve learned that it’s important that the product you are trying to promote still shines among the other artistic elements. (Here’s a GREAT example of how to make the product the co-star in Elle Fanning’s story from our friends at Coach).
This focus on integrating the product into the story is even MORE important if you are starting from a relatively low baseline of awareness. Recently, LOEWE successfully countered the aspirational lifestyle trend by focusing on the tactile elements of their bags. The ad features beautiful product shots focusing on the materials, movement, and sounds, and resulted in brand lift for Awareness and Purchase Consideration.
LOEWE Fall Winter 2025 Pre-Collection
The winning brand lift performance, despite low to medium diagnostic scores in Breakthrough and Engagement, suggest that these tactile elements can influence consumers in a subconscious, emotional way.
The evidence for the emotional impact came through loud and clear in the respondent comments. Compared with other luxury brands we tested, where sensory perceptions mainly show up as comments like “pretty women holding bags”, LOEWE generates meaningfully more tactile language, especially:
- The feel of the product. People directly naming what the bag is made of or how it looks and feels as a material.
- “...they squished the bags to show the flexibility and texture of the leather.”
- “I love the showing of the leather.”
- “I like how it shows the quality of the material.”
- The behavior of the product. Even when not naming leather, we heard comments about how the bag moves, feels, or performs physically.
- “...show the flexibility...”
- “...looks like it’s breathing.”
- “It shows its durability yet style.”
- “...I like how soft the ad is…”
- The sound of the product. LOEWE isn’t just showing tactility — it’s sonically reinforcing it.
- “The sound effects… gave the effect of the bag being high quality.”
- “...the sound gives luxury.”
In Summary
By focusing on the sensory elements of the bags, LOEWE helped consumers experience the product firsthand. They made the product the star of the story, successfully driving significant gains in brand awareness and consideration. We anticipate that as the company builds awareness of its brand name and its products we will also see increases in diagnostic scores on Brand Engagement.
Want to learn more about how to maximize the return on your ad spend with effective creative? Connect with us and request a demo.