Understanding Luxury Branding And Marketing Strategies
Have any questions?
Just contact us below, our
team is always ready to help.
Promoting luxury brands demands advanced and tailored strategic approaches beyond traditional marketing methods. In the digital era, luxury brands continuously evolve their digital marketing strategies to uphold their positioning and engage their target audience effectively. This entails not only showcasing their products but also effectively conveying their messaging. The team at Bold x Collective breaks down everything you need to know about luxury branding in this blog.
The Essentials of Luxury Branding
Covering all the fundamentals of building a luxury brand in a single blog post is challenging, so consider this as more of an introductory guide. Labelling a brand as luxury and creating an elegant logo, colour scheme, or product does not automatically make it a luxury brand. Before delving into the components that define a luxury brand, let's first understand the meaning of the term "luxury."
An abundance of comfort and extravagant living characterizes luxury. Specifically, all luxury items share four key elements: high quality, high price point, scarcity, and heritage.
Everyday brands, categorized as "premium" or "mass consumer," are differentiated based on quality and desirability. A premium brand typically has a high price and excellent quality, while a mass-consumer brand offers products with a lower to average price point and decent quality.
For instance, when a new iPhone is released with a high price, excellent quality, and brand heritage, it falls more into the premium brand category, targeting anyone willing to pay for it. In contrast, if you were to bring 50 people to a Gucci store to purchase the same bag, there might not be enough stock to fulfill even half of the demand.
Premium brands are not synonymous with luxury brands as they lack exclusivity and many other essential components that define a genuine luxury brand. While luxury goods may have premium counterparts aimed at the mass market, it is usually evident when encountering a high-end luxury product.
One of the notable characteristics of luxury brands is their strong brand identity and affinity. While there are various ways to establish a brand identity, we believe that a successful luxury brand encompasses the following four fundamental elements:
Brand Heritage
To establish a genuine connection with its target audience, a brand must effectively communicate its heritage, revealing its origins and evolution over time.
For luxury brands, and occasionally premium brands, heritage plays a vital role in enhancing the brand's desirability. These brands leverage their heritage as a foundation for all marketing and brand strategies.
A prime example of utilizing brand heritage to foster desirability is Louis Vuitton. The brand's founder, Louis Vuitton, embarked on a remarkable journey to Paris at the age of 16. After 17 years of experience in the packaging industry, he was employed by Napoleon III's wife, catering to royalty and the elite as their packager and box maker.
What makes this story significant is that even after Louis Vuitton's passing, his legacy endured and his brand continued to flourish. When consumers form an emotional connection with a relatable or aspirational narrative, it strengthens the brand's identity and fosters a profound connection. Undoubtedly, brand heritage holds immense importance for luxury brands.
It's worth noting that brand heritage differs from a brand story. While a new brand can have a story, it takes decades for it to develop heritage and a lasting legacy.
Brand Values
Every brand, whether it's a luxury brand, premium brand, or an everyday brand, possesses its set of values. These values serve as guiding principles and beliefs that shape the brand's personality, products, and overall operations.
When we consider brand heritage, the consistency of a brand in upholding its guiding principles and beliefs for several decades speaks volumes. Brand values often originate from the brand's founder, and the most exceptional brands strive to remain steadfast in adhering to those original values. However, it is also crucial to recognize when and how to adapt as society and culture evolve.
Luxury brands, in particular, are characterized by values such as quality, exclusivity, craftsmanship, passion, and timelessness. To effectively convey these values to your target audience, your brand must actively engage in endeavors that exemplify these principles. By wholeheartedly embracing your brand's values, you are not only meeting your customers' needs but also cultivating a strong character and identity that aligns with your brand's heritage.
establishing your Brand Image
Once you have established the internal components of your brand, it becomes essential to shift your focus towards the outward appearance of your brand's identity. Brand image refers to how consumers perceive your brand from an external perspective.
Determining how your brand aligns with cultural, social, and even political factors that can significantly impact its image is of utmost importance. An excellent illustration of this is the increasing number of luxury companies opting to forgo the use of real fur in their jackets.
Luxury brands often encounter periods of societal and cultural change. The digital era has accelerated the rate at which brands must adapt to these cultural shifts, causing many luxury brands to remain unchanged for the majority of their existence.
A key principle for luxury brands is to present themselves in a manner that resonates with their heritage, values, and target audience. This involves effectively communicating your brand with a high level of integrity while also respecting your brand's essence without idolizing it. Brands are meant to evolve alongside the changing times; this doesn't signify a departure from the values that have shaped their identity.
Marketing for Luxury Brands
Luxury marketing strategies adhere to certain traditional marketing principles, often referred to as the 4Ps: price, place, promotion, and product. In previous discussions, we explored the aspects of price and product, focusing on the product's quality and craftsmanship. Now, let's delve into the concepts of place and promotion, highlighting three essential factors:
Create A Sense Of Exclusivity Through Scarcity
The concept of scarcity, traditionally associated with the place element of the marketing mix, plays a significant role in luxury brand strategies. Place, in terms of scarcity, refers to the availability and accessibility of a product or service. While a bottle of your favorite soda can be found almost everywhere, locating a coveted Burberry or Chanel bag may be limited to specific brand locations or a select few luxury boutiques. Moreover, these stores often maintain a restricted inventory of new products.
In the era of eCommerce and the rise of online shopping, many brands now employ tactics like "product drops" or waiting lists to create a sense of scarcity. Product drops involve releasing a limited quantity of products that quickly sell out, resulting in their unavailability thereafter. While this marketing campaign can be effective for certain brands, it is crucial to exercise caution and avoid creating excessive artificial scarcity that might alienate the very luxury consumers the brand aims to attract.
Influencer Marketing
As highlighted in this article, numerous luxury brand founders gained prominence by catering to royalty, the elite, and celebrities. While luxury brands no longer exclusively target royalty, they continue to attract attention from A-list celebrities, public figures, and influencers with substantial social media followings.
Luxury brands employ aspirational marketing as a strategy to tap into our desires and convey through advertising that their products can fulfill our need for status, lifestyle, and aspirations. To illustrate this concept, consider the scenario where your favorite celebrity or social media influencer showcases a particular brand, such as Rolex. Although you may not attain the exact same status as that individual, you can aspire to get closer by aspiring to own or wear the same brand.
This forms the foundation of influencer marketing. When we observe influencers we follow endorsing high-end products on a daily basis, we develop admiration for those products and, in turn, yearn to possess those same brands. Millennials and Gen Z consumers, in particular, exhibit a heightened receptiveness to this type of social media marketing.
Brand Management Across Social Media
Effective brand management is crucial for all types of brands, but the level of intricacy involved in managing a luxury or prominent brand is extensive.
Unlike many non-luxury brands, luxury brands are not commonly seen running advertisements or PPC ads across various social media platforms. Their presence is primarily observed in magazines. This deliberate approach aligns with the principle of scarcity, which limits access to luxury brands. However, many luxury brands are now striving to balance exclusivity and inclusivity.
Luxury brands can undoubtedly maintain an active presence on social media, but they must carefully curate the content they share, determine the frequency of posts, and design their engagement strategies. Finding the proper equilibrium between creating an exclusive allure and fostering community building is paramount.
Are you seeking the right agency to help you with your luxury strategy? Contact Bold x Collective for a consultation today.