(Feature image credit with thanks here)
The writer Peter York said
"Luxury is a business model. If you are a luxury brand, the thing that you make is the brand”.
He makes a good point. Because, in luxury, the distance between the functional value of a product and the symbolic value of a brand is the greatest in comparison to any other market category.
Brands’ painstakingly, beautifully, created presentations of desire, style, quality, craftsmanship, authenticity, zeitgeist and consumer understanding can contribute massive value. Brand marketing, in itself, gives the status and aspiration that luxury consumers look for.
Rarity, excellence, and high prices have to be justified to discerning UHNW and HNW audiences. If you are in wine, fashion, jewellery, cars, private aviation, hotels, hospitality, entertainment, superyachts, or travel your customers want exclusivity and quality.
Sometimes they want the cutting edge of innovation and style.
(Image credit with thanks here)
Sometimes they want reassuring comforts of nostalgia, reassurance, and old comforts. Sometimes they want luxurious escape. The psychological drivers of luxury are wide ranging indeed.
There are various luxury marketing strategies that brands - and their luxury brand consultants - use. And they must be executed in stylish, relevant, ways to increasingly sophisticated global audiences.
Here are some that have worked through the ages:
Creation stories
Luxury brands need creation stories. We have the original, the only, the newest, the oldest, the rawest, the rarest, the most hard to get, the most stylish, the purest, the tastiest…..
Many stories and narratives are based on craft. Practically, symbolically and psychologically the act of making something permanent, something beautiful, in an all-too-often ugly, impersonal world has always been valued.
Founder stories
Many brands have impressive beginnings. Themes usually feature humble artisan roots, triumph- over- tragedy stories, skilled brave entrepreneurism, ‘Questor’, or ‘David/Goliath’ archetypes. Good ones last for ever and help keep legacy brands alive as LVMH understand well. The recent Widow Clicquot film is a fine example.
(Image credit with thanks here)
Emotion
The spectrum here is wide of course but good market research can unearth a brand’s deeper triggers and help companies how to articulate the right desires and aspirations. Sharing a brand’s values and beliefs with like-minded people is powerful.
Exclusivity
Of course. A sense of community has always been strong and people -more than ever – want to belong. They want to share/show off/reassure themselves throughout the various life stages with brands that reflect their values and interests. UHNW brands can make customers feel special and important by offering, for example, limited edition products, bespoke services, or unusual retail locations, or invitation - only events.
Interestingly Pol Roger are currently running scarcity/quality campaign using the endline ‘Reassuringly hard to find’.
Make memories and experiences
It’s how luxury bricks n’ mortar retail is reinventing itself. The conventional shop is being reframed as theatre, as drama, using spaces that offer value beyond their products or services. e.g. immersive environments, tailor-made offers, or one-off experiential events. People can talk about them.
Extend
Brand collaborations introduce customers to shared brand values and image beyond their own and creates newsworthy content.
Brand image creation
It is hard to do imaginatively and consistently. It means taking a macro and micro approach, solid brand propositions, deep consumer understanding, thoughtful management, creativity that reflects the craftmanship, care and quality of the brand, and the sensitive positioning of all communication touchpoints, like advertising, product design, visual identity, customer service, social media, retail placing and experience.
High prices
Cost itself is a tactic. High prices can create a superior image, talk value, and prestige positioning. Some may remember Stella Artois’ ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ campaign which ran from the 1980’s to the 2000’s. Its objective was to turn the negative of higher prices into a positive. So, they told people that by being pricier, their brew was better than cheaper ones.
Think deeper
For all marketers, the job has got tougher. Media fragmentation, multiple stakeholders, pressure on budgets, instant accountability, job insecurity, consumer fickleness, economic austerity, supply chain instability ….to name but a few.
In fact, the very idea of luxury has been overused to such an extent as to sometimes be virtually meaningless.
Nevertheless, luxury brands have flourished successfully throughout history because, more than any other market sector, its owners and managers understand that meaning means monetisation. That luxury brand marketing is about selling emotions, stories, connections more than just the product. And a little luxury makes people happy.
It means thinking harder about mankind. After all, the world doesn’t truly need another watch, bottle of wine or piece of jewellery.
But people want luxury. We all need our dreams. We all long for better. Most of us look up to that bigger house on the hill, to the mountain top.
(Image credit with thanks here)
We buy luxury brands assuming they will express what we may not be able to say in words. Great luxury brands can reflect our best selves, lets us create a persona we want to be, and have a uniquely personal story we wish to tell or show.
As Fats Waller put it in 1930:
"It ‘ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. That’s what gets results".
And results are what Anew, the luxury brand agency, delivers
Whether it is insights from market research, strategic brand thinking, new brand names, luxury logo design, messaging, online and offline content, coffee table books and luxury brand websites, we are London-based luxury experts.
We help companies increase brand profitability through sharper insights, distinctive propositions, creative ideas and faultless execution.
To get in touch do drop us an email. We'd be delighted to meet for a coffee, either face-to-face or virtually to discuss your brief.
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