Haute Luxe: uma história de amor*

Philippe Mihailovich, professor de "luxury brand management" na EDHEC Business School em França, avisa contra estratégias simplistas de branding, fundadas em "contar histórias". Ele defende em vez disso que as marcas devem ser verdadeiras "almas gémeas" dos consumidores, baseadas em lealdade e numa "história de amor". Esta é um primeiro artigo agora publicado na Newsletter Luxury Society, que Estação Cronográfica aqui trás, em primeira mão:

Now is the time to get your brand story right

The face of luxury branding is changing forever, as is our world. The internet, mass media and mass expansion of luxury brands into emerging economies across the globe has led to the development of a very luxury-savvy consumer. The consumer is becoming an educated expert, a connoisseur. These clients now have the power to seek out the rare, to personalise the product and to widen their choice even more. If ever there was a time to build a strong competitive identity, it is now. If you don’t get your brand message right at this moment, when consumers are seeking out the best, you could find yourself left out in the cold for a long time to come. It’s easier to create a good reputation when consumers have an open mind. Once they feel they become experts, it will take much more work to change their minds. It’s time to get your story right.

Branding is not only for Business

Branding is not only about business, it just often happens to fall under the control of marketing professionals and business people. Countries, regions and cities too are considered as brands and nowadays compete as brands. They cannot be sold or put onto balance sheets, but they have to cope with the same issues of brand image, brand reputation and ultimately brand identity just as commercial brands need to do. In the business of luxury, branding and marketing has traditionally been despised and brand management has not been a norm. Behind the best marques are often the creators themselves or their families. In luxury fashion, the responsibility of a ‘brand manager’ is traditionally found to fall onto the shoulders of a talented designer. There’s a reason for this. Luxury understands the importance of creativity. Luxury is driven by excitement, passion and creativity. Anything less is quickly exposed as shallow or soulless or worse, opportunist or ‘bling’.

Simple Story-telling is over

Many luxury brands fail to provide all the answers that today’s informed customers seeks to know. Simple ‘storytelling’ isn’t good enough anymore. True luxury brands are not built on one story such as a Ralph Lauren Polo story/theme. This would be like building the reputation of an artist on only one piece of work. The luxury brand story is more about the artist, his creative universe, his beliefs and values as well as perhaps technique, materials and all the emotional touch-points that the work may evoke. The less it touches us emotionally, the less we may be interested in it, just as in human relationships. A human being has many stories to tell, as should a brand, and a person who always recounts the same story is often considered boring, shallow, limited or all at once, same with a brand. What is more, the brands can no longer control their brand messages in the way that they used to. There is too much information coming in, from blogs to traditional media to opinions of friends and the brand’s competitors. Luxury brands need to recognise that they have to engage with consumers on a more personal, emotional as well as functional level, in order to succeed in today’s marketplace because sooner or later they will move on and leave your brand behind. As with human relationships, you need to build shared experiences with the other, over time. It’s about building stories, not telling stories.

Branding and Marketing are Dirty Words

In the luxury field, the word ‘brand’ mostly implies ‘marketing’ and marketing has always been considered a dirty little American word in the industry. It implies looking for more business, more sales, and overtly targeting customers as if they are being hunted down for their money. In contrast, luxury goods makers did not target the customer they attracted the client. They were not based on business plans but on visionaries with a great passion to create something new. Their creations were acquired by the privileged few who came to them for their expertise. They did not need to ‘brand’. Their style was as distinctive as a Van Gough brush-stroke. Branding is for herds of cattle that all look the same and therefore the only way to differentiate one from another is the burn your name into its hide to state “I own it”. It’s very far from claiming, “I created it”. Luxury was not ’brand’. Today’s luxury ‘brands’ are targeting the masses but trying to be subtle about it. As such ‘brand’ can be seen to imply, known to all and accessible to many. The risk is its vulgarisation, but not necessarily so.

The Luxury ‘brand’ must be a Soulmate

The most effective brands capture your attention with their look, win you over with their unique personality, impress you with their heritage and breeding, get under your skin with their magnetism, work their way to your heart with their warmth, and seal your loyalty with theirs. Creating a successful and enduring luxury marque is about forging a deep emotional bond with the consumer. The luxury brand must aim to become a soulmate. When you have a one-to-one relationship, you don’t need to ‘brand’ yourself, you already exist in the mind and hopefully, heart of the other. You are unique to your client and your client is unique to you. The unique method that I will propose in this forthcoming series is based on this all-important recognition. Every luxury ‘brand’ should aim to become a new soulmate. “Some women, when they go to a party, get more emotional support from the expensive new handbag they’re clutching than they get from their husbands,” fashion publisher Jane Raphaely says with a smile.


*‘Haute Luxe’ is the title of the upcoming book by Philippe Mihailovich, professor of luxury brand management at EDHEC Business School in France and a confidante to some of the world’s leading luxury brands. It is a highly emotive perspective on the new luxury consumer relationship that is evolving in the post-crisis and post-masstige era.

For more details about the book or to view video interviews, see www.hauteluxe.net