Luxury Marketing: Austere Times Call for Disarming Strategies

Even if the harsh realities of this year's economy have not touched us personally, we have not been unaffected by them.

As has been widely reported, the luxury market has taken a hammering. This year has seen a widespread climate of disapproval emerge in our culture. Mere ownership and display of luxury goods has become synonymous with an almost ostentatious flaunting, seen as reflecting a callous insensitivity to the hard times befalling so many others. There has been widespread rush to judgment, in much the same way that greets a Hummer on the roads albeit for different reasons; its existence has become an embodiment for a disregard for environmental concern..and almost a shameless pride in it.

One smart strategy is not to deny the criticism but to tackle it head-on. It is, after all, a hurdle that prevents people being comfortable buying, however much they might want (and secretly covet) the prize and long to own it.

Hats off to Porsche for adopting this approach. Anticipating criticism is captured elegantly in the headline with a tone that far from seeming defensive sounds pragmatic, evoking a feeling of being confidently prepared. An accomplishment in itself.



















The key to success? Leverage the equity that give luxury makers rooted in substance (rather than overly dependent on style) a powerful neutralizing effect: Performance.

Performance is that wonderful quality whose existence is inherently self-justifying. It represents tangible proof for what one has paid more. It is born of advanced engineering and design - noble characteristics indeed - which enables assertions to or inferences about privilege to be assiduously avoided. Porsche has even suggested that the efficiency dimension of performance represents greater environment responsibility, the idea of 'doing more with less'.

Arming the audience with ammunition in the form of knowledge serves to disarm the critics. This is the final part of this erudition -- recognition of what is so overlooked by marketers in cultivating people's relationships through brands: storytelling.


















Give people things that help them to tell their stories. If we can tell a story we have a claim to having a reason. An assertion to belonging. Storytelling is a basic human need, one that helps us feel connected to others and perhaps more importantly, to ourselves:

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives"

Reynolds Price

Range Rover’s Ad Campaign Recycles Nissan and Raises The Bar

Many SUV brands face a challenge. Most drivers won’t use the vehicles for what they were built to do. The vast majority will stay on road rather than venture off.

The trick for marketers is to figure out how to showcase capabilities in a relevant way that heightens appeal despite the fact that most likely won’t ever be used.

One strategy has been to promote a distinct attitude or mindset that aligns with the character of the brand to foster strong affiliation and therefore confirmation desire.

Nissan’s Pathfinder campaign in 2000 was one good example. The SUV’s were featured in a variety of implausible yet possible situations: one ascending a ski slope, another navigating a steeplechase course and a collection of Pathfinders playing polo (rather than horses). “Not that you would but you could” was the rallying cry. It was an inventive solution to exactly the challenges outlined above.















Print copy closed with a similar theme: “…..So, while you may never storm Pikes Peak or own the passing lane in Munich, isn’t it nice to know you could?”

More recently Range Rover does a nice job of using this strategy. It does more than serve up a fresh interpretation. As an SUV distinctly in the premium class, the campaign ensures the prestige and luxury appeals are elegantly delivered.

















At rising tide, few of its owners may ever drive to Mont-Saint-Michel – or possibly escape – but as the copy notes, the fortunate ones have the privilege of an extra half an hour for passage. If you listen intently you can almost hear in the wind crossing the flats….not that you would, but you could.

Being comfortable with the uncomfortable

Many people experience discomfort when they encounter something that challenges an existing held belief or understanding about their world. It is often not something people are conscious of, and while the reaction may occur in the form of a feeling, most often it does not: it is merely an immediate visceral rejection to the stimulus which emerges as a sense that it is simply wrong.

Comfort represents a condition or state in which a belief has solidified and become firmly entrenched. The stimulus is challenging precisely because it threatens this established order, it is literally stirring up that which has settled in the mind.

We are not talking about stimuli that are blatantly offensive, such an an image of one person violently kicking another; discomfort and rejection at a subconscious level can be precipitated by something relatively innocuous.

A case in point: OFD was invited to talk with some folks in the advertising industry recently about the luxury car brand they were representing. The task at hand was to understand how to sell more of these expensive vehicles in what is a heavily contested market. OFD raised the need to understand the intersection of the core idea of luxury with current cultural trends. The former is what people have a fundamental relationship with, but due to the modulating, moderating effect of the latter, it needs to be re-contextualized to attain contemporary relevance.

In this regard the group was asked to consider how the quality of power could be play out in the current luxury climate. There was immediate resistance. The associations which they had with this term - dominance, an aggressive attitude or display, abuse - were firmly entrenched and got in the way of openly engaging with the idea. There was much discussion, but the echoes of the deeply held beliefs about power kept coming out. The idea that the character of power could be different, something intimate, privately experienced and enjoyed rather than being aggressively and publicly displayed created real discomfort, real friction.

As a society we have stopped appreciating the value in feeling uncomfortable and forgotten how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. These are unpredictable and uncertain times, which only heightens people's tendencies to want to cling to the familiar. This is above and beyond the cultural forces that work beneath the surface of our daily consciousness which push us towards inertia and stability rather than flux and change.

In the pursuit of progress, the idea itself is not enough. The context in which the idea is exposed, the 'mental environment' in which people encounter it has a critical impact on the ability to fully understand the idea itself as well as the ability to fully engage with it.