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Luxury Brands

Luxury Brands

For most brand managers, luxury brands are never learning sources.
November 12, 2015

What brands can learn from luxury brands

For most brand managers, luxury brands are never learning sources. Typically luxury brands are seen as brands which operate in a niche and it is believed that what they do can seldom be understood or extrapolated to other categories/segments. While some of this is true, luxury brands offer valuable lessons to other brands as well. Here are a few that stand out:

1. The stellar art of sharp positioning

Luxury brands have a clear way of communicating what they stand (and what they don’t). The design of the brand identity, the use of tangible and intangible messaging, appropriate use of the colours, ruthless consistency are great lessons for marketers to learn from luxury brands

2. Excellent adoption of relevant channels

Luxury brands understand and select the absolutely right channels for promotion and sale so their brands. Airport lounges, in-flight magazines, cross-selling with other luxury brands, the right set of people who front-end their brand ensure that the channels are true extensions of the brand and not misfits. As an illustration, one could see a distinct pattern in the placement of advertisements, store designs, training of sales personnel and channel incentivization programs of these brands even while managing thousands of such touch-points

3. Resisting price pressures and protecting premium

One of the biggest pressures on marketers is on price and how they can discount it capture additional sales. This strikes the margin percentages and makes it virtually impossible for a brand to sell at the marked price again. Luxury brands rarely (if at all) extend any discounts. Instead they look to make the price a ‘style –statement of sorts’ for the brand and connote that it is indeed luxury.

4. Say No! emphatically

Luxury brands do a phenomenal job of saying no to segments they do not plan to target. They have a razor sharp definition of their segments and user persona to identify who is and more importantly who is not their target segment. Luxury brands seldom make attempts to reach out to segments which are not their target almost to the point of being called ‘snobbish’

5. Undivided focus on customer experience

Luxury brands have a larger vision on how they would want to interact with the customer and what experiences they can provide the core products. They use all other interaction opportunities to enhance the offerings like in-store experiences, loyalty programs, price-offs unexpected by customers, constantly understanding how the experience can be improved etc.

All in all, Luxury brands offer fruitful insights which other brands can learn. However, the brands which decide to use these techniques need to adapt them to their context and not be lost in the process or extrapolate too much into entirely contexts.

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