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A subversive headline in a luxury brand marketing blog if there ever was one. Heresy.
But yes, good old luxury!
In a world of self-obsession, celebrity, shamelessness, lack of trust, marketing over-literacy, oversharing and pseudo-drama.
Where just maybe people are now seeing through the fantasists, tech greed, the delusion, falsehoods and cults of fake political hucksters.
That expertise, facts and legals might actually matter – think major political failed promises, crypto-currency collapses, Silicon Valley arrogance...
It’s good to remember some of the fundamentals:
Luxury is solid
Image credit: Flickr
We have our bedrock, trusted'n’tested, luxury marketing narratives of beauty, design, innovation, craftsmanship, authenticity, creativity, quality, entrepreneurship and sustainability.
They are the tangibles.
Never failed for thousands of years.
Luxury is also inner directed
Image credit: Commons WikiMedia
As all the luxury brand marketing experts reveal in their interviews, the real luxuries are the intangibles: peace of mind, good health, time, nourishing loving relationships.
We think materialistic things will provide us real pleasure, or comfort and peace – and they do, they do.
People love their cars, watches, jewellery, fine wine, property, fragrances, art…
But nothing lasts for ever
The reality though is that the pleasure we may take in luxury may be quite transitory.
Psychologists have identified something called the hedonic treadmill.
This is a theory pointing out that people repeatedly return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of what happens to them.
When we experience good things, such as buying something beautiful, a new house or car, it induces an increase in happiness, which will later reduce to a normal personal baseline over time.
In other words, sugar rush, then crash.
Image credit: Pokerstars
Luxury brands and technology are not boring
Oh, of course they are not.
We’re all angsting about the metaverse, the real verse, digi-fashion, AI, NFTs, CGI, ABBA, Gen Z, data literacy, future skills, the value of art, what is real art, the meaning of art, and the future of humanity in a tech world – and anything else you’ve got - but this week we went to two Metaverse conferences with our colleagues from The British School of Fashion GCU and Syberite, even they say it’s all confusing, and wait 10 years.
There’s a lot of evangelising and futurists out there. And some super smart salespeople seeing gaps.
But it’s a constant – indeed fascinating – conversation, on many levels, and we are working on an NFT project, and learning all the time.
As the President of Nokia wisely observes "If the metaverse was a person, it would be a 30-year-old still in search of their first job”
He points out that we should be talking about plural metaverses: consumer, enterprise and industrial.
If the consumer version is where you play, the enterprise one is where you can co-design with your customers and the industrial portal is where you manufacture it.
The froth and noise is on fashion and art - the consumer version of the metaverse as it is easier to understand.
But the industrial and enterprise metaverses are probably more financially rewarding and are already being used to test future scenarios in industries such as aerospace, logistics and manufacturing.
It’s the wood and trees thing.
What really might work well is really hard to explain right now.
It’s more direct to grapple with the thought of your grandchildren being able to express their different identities/selves wearing different digi-clothes, in different parts of the metaverse – which will also be different to real life.
Luxury is not dull, it is thriving - but it is more complex
Anew are a London-based luxury brand agency who help companies - such as Bombardier Private Aviation, Universal Music, Hatch Mansfield and Boodles luxury jewellers - increase brand profitability through sharper insights, distinctive propositions, creative ideas and faultless execution. And we are here to help.
We are particularly adept at working directly with luxury brands, business owners, start-ups and entrepreneurs who are committed to sustainability, outstanding quality and craft.
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