Luxury is always worth the wait

(Feature image: Bernard Spragg via Wikimedia)

Our latest article in Luxury Briefing Magazine how luxury brands get better the more you wait or get to know them. The waiting, the gradual revelation, the sense of earning the knowledge, is itself part of the proposition.

You can see a selection of others from our 'Brand Matters' series by following the links at the end of the article.

Campaign magazine recently said advertising has abandoned the old-fashioned ‘reveal’ structure which is based on the idea of building curiosity and only showing the brand, product, or endline at the end. Bit sad. Think of all those great TV ads of the past where you rewarded with a joke, a payoff, a self-deprecating sting at the end.Today's media makes clients nervous about losing people’s attention. People swipe, switch and scroll in seconds. You feel you must get the brand message across immediately rather than risk fast forwarding to the end.

Who waits for anything these days. Just tell me what it is, what it does, what it costs, and Now. Well, yesterday actually.

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

It made me think about delayed gratification. How luxury brands are different and get better the more you wait or get to know them. The waiting, the gradual revelation, the sense of earning the knowledge, is itself part of the proposition. The more you understand about a Rolls or a Pétrus, the more it means. Luxury is one of the few sectors that gets better the longer it makes you wait.

You may know the 1970 Stanford marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification by psychologist Walter Mischel. A child was offered a choice between one small, immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the child in a room with a single marshmallow for about 15 mins and then returned. If they did not eat the marshmallow, the reward was another marshmallow. They found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes. Findings suggested that children who successfully waited for the second treat generally achieved higher SAT scores, completed more education, and maintained healthier body mass indexes as adults.

A Patek Philippe perpetual calendar takes years to make. Some watch complications are, well, complicated. Their line about never owning the watch but merely looking after it for the next generation is the ultimate delayed gratification proposition. The watch isn't for you. It's for the next generation.

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

Bespoke tailoring from Savile Row involves many fittings over weeks. The finished suit is the end of a long conversation between cloth, cutter, and client. The wait is functional but also ceremonial and marks the seriousness of the transaction.

A Chanel or Dior couture piece can take thousands of hours of hand stitching. The client waits months. The fitting is part of the experience. Being measured, consulted, considered. That dress is the possible end of a relationship, not just a sale.

Pétrus’s label reads Pétrus, not Château Pétrus. Because the estate is not built around a grand château. Just a modest farmhouse and a chapel. The wine has to carry everything. There's no experiential arts/culture brand co-lab event to lean on. That restraint is in itself a kind of statement. The wine needs about 20 years in the cellar. I’ve never tasted it but Sotheby’s says it is so highly valued, it is the one wine you ‘have to try before you die’. At £30K a bottle, I'm in no hurry. The wine can wait for me.

Aged spirits. The clue’s in the title. You drink time. Someone decided decades ago that the liquid was worth keeping. The patience isn't yours. It was done on your behalf, which makes it even more powerful as a luxury signal. A Macallan 30-year single malt or a Rémy Martin Louis XIII cognac crafted from 1,200 individual eaux-de-vie sourced exclusively from the Grande Champagne region and aged for up to 100 years in ancient oak barrel. (£3,500 a bottle.)

A one-off car from Aston Martin's Q division involves months of consultation, choosing veneers, leathers, paints mixed specifically for you. The car doesn't exist when you commission it. They make it entirely specific to you. You're buying the process as much as the car.

All of these examples present the object as almost being secondary to the underlying need to be known, to be understood. You’re not just buying a dress, a car, a wine, a watch, a 5-star hotel room… you’re buying the experience of a company paying close, skilled, unhurried attention to you. A rare thing indeed.

Although you could save yourself the money, go to a good Hampstead psychotherapist, appreciate that life can be short and wanting metal on wheels that goes fast is simply overcompensating for other unresolved insecurities in life. Not enough love from your wife/father/mother/kids. You never felt special. Etc. And with that greater internal wisdom and self-knowledge you can be proud to drive a Skoda Estate.

Luxury seduces, suggests, withholds. We don’t usually do overt sell. Very vulgar. We don’t lead with price, product, or aggressive proposition.

As Van Morrison understood, the desire to rise above it all... smell the sea, feel the sky, let your soul and spirit fly, into the mystic... is human.

Luxury brands simply know how to help some of us get there.

Anew's a London-based branding consultancy specialising in luxury and premium brands

Its two founders deliver: 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 help companies increase brand profitability through sharper insights, distinctive propositions, creative ideas and faultless execution.

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