What is a luxury brand? What makes a brand a luxury brand?
In this post, we at Team Luxeveda share our knowledge on luxury brands. We provide you with some basic ideas to keep in my mind when building a luxury brand from scratch and creating a lasting brand image. Luxury brands are prestigious and are so-called indicators of social status. They tend to have a convincing history and a brand culture which creates stable associations with quality, style and comfort. Such brands remain vulnerable to image risks, which can lead to a loss of consumer confidence. They are always under pressure from younger, modern brands that offer competitive products in terms of quality at a more reasonable price. It is essential to highlight that price is not the only matter of significance for the luxury market. A successful luxury brand is authentic, rare, uncompromising, valuable, coveted that builds up to a high sense of factual and emotional superiority.
Now that the basic concept of a Luxury Brand is familiarised let’s proceed to the brand factors to know to build a strong, unique luxury brand, especially from scratch.
THE PRODUCT
To get a product worthy of becoming a brand in the luxury segment, your business needs to focus on details: product details, packaging details and details of relationships with your customers. For instance, almost straight after its establishment, Louis Vuitton released its product line of flat-topped trunks. An out-of-box design compared to the round-topped trunks, which were widely used at the time. Another example is the Italian fashion label OFF White, built on the principle of irony. The uniqueness of their products is putting “everything in quotes,” the distinctive element of this brand is the irony and factors as simple as chunky quotation marks.
Apart from the visuals and design, your product will have to create a rich and memorable story that triggers that experience in a customers’ mind to create that lasting impression. It will be impossible to hold your customers’ attention by only talking about the quality of your product or service.
BRAND NAME
Many brands bear the real names of their creators. This approach works to strengthen customer trust in the value of the product, real quality and, most importantly, individuality and uniqueness of the brand. The name should exude sophistication and elegance, and emphasise a culture of belonging and group identity. That is, everyone who buys from your brand should feel a sense of belonging and camaraderie with each other. An example of a compelling and memorable world-known luxury brand is Ralph Lauren. The real name of the owner was Ralph Lifshitz. However, to make the brand’s name more attractive and evocative, he changed his surname.
BRAND SATISFACTION
Luxury represents an aspirational standard. Your customer aspires to reach the highest level of social hierarchy, which is why they are willing to invest in your brand. Elite spirits, antiques, expensive furniture can cost a lot of money. It is thus imperative to ensure that your customers feel valued and cared for and providing them with a unique personalised experience. Look at what your brand can do. Up until now, luxury brands have focussed on in-store sales and acquired majority customer satisfaction. But today, as a luxury brand it is time to get creative. One way could be to explore premium personalisation. The House of Dior recently led the trend with their ABCDIOR personalisationservice, that lets customers have their initials or name embroidered into their pieces.
BRAND PROMOTION
Advertising of luxury brands should focus primarily on luxury, the feeling of happiness and inspiration, the high quality of products and the prestige acquired by the buyer after purchasing an exclusive product. When writing a script for a commercial, create ad groups in such a way as to make consumers feel that the goods produced and the service provided are certain embodiments of luxury. Let us take, for example, advertisements posted by Rolex. Owing to the correctly chosen style, language and aesthetics, the campaign instantly makes people believe that the watches serve as an embodiment of wealth and prestige. All they need to do is to put on the watch on their wrist — and automatically approach the elite.
Luxury Brands entail significant financial investment, resulting in customers having high expectations from the quality and experience of the brand. Ensure that consistent premium experience is delivered throughout the customer journey. The goal is to exceed expectations to satisfy customers with the brand experience.
