Marketing premium and luxury products in a highly commoditized category is a unique challenge for manufacturers, sales teams, and retailers. Developing a compelling, repeatable, and unique story that sets your product or service apart is critical to succeeding in such an environment. The right luxury consultant, experienced in discerning, developing, and communicating such stories, is a valuable asset to help a brand stand out.
The consumer meets the brand halfway for traditional luxury categories like fashion, auto, and hospitality. They’re already familiar with the qualities that define these luxury products and experiences and are more than ready to spend a premium on them. They have also been primed to hear the stories these brands tell, and luxury brands continuously hone their stories to connect with their customers’ evolving desires.
Luxury brands operating within commodified categories can learn, with proper guidance, how to craft similarly compelling stories by first identifying what is authentically luxurious about their brands and then developing tailored messages communicating that value to channel partners and end-users.
Authentic luxury (or, authlux, for short) products are distinguished by their originality, integrity, transparency, and provenance.
How does our product reflect these qualities? What about your product is original? It could be a genuinely new design or possess a unique function.
How does your company voice its commitment to manufacturing quality and operational excellence to address integrity?
Transparency addresses the luxury buyer’s desire to see through the brand façade to the people who make the product, the places where they work, and the materials they use.
Provenance is the story of how a company, brand, and product came to be, its journey from intention to creation.
With the product story developed, narratives for potential channel partners must answer three key questions: How is a product different, how is the business program profitable, and is it easy to sell and service.
Differentiation is rooted in the story of originality but tells the audience what unmet need is being fulfilled. Does the product address a desire for a particular design or lifestyle trend, work better and last longer than existing solutions?
The profitability story clarifies how the money will be made and saved. Distributors and dealers want to know they’ll make a good profit. Salespeople wish for a good commission, and specifiers and influencers wish for happy clients that lead to additional business.
Communicating the ease of working with a brand also has multiple facets. Everyone wants to know how friction will be minimalized, from being so unique and functionally appealing that it “sells itself, having compelling digital and print collateral that helps convince a client. Operationally, the product is readily available and quickly returned if necessary.
A luxury consultant can then work with brands to tailor these messages to impress the different audiences crucial for a product’s journey from factory to end-user. Depending on the path to market, there may be one story to tell a wholesaler that leads to committing space in their warehouse and on their trucks. Another version to convince a sales representative to devote their time and energy, and another for the showroom owner to commit space for merchandising. The showroom consultant wants to hear a particular narrative before presenting products to potential buyers. And there are iterations for the many influencers important for success, such as specifiers and journalists.
Each audience has a different filter to judge what products they’ll take time to learn about, support, and promote.
And most importantly, a luxury product’s authlux story, how it meets the market’s desires, makes people money, and is a pleasure to work with, must be shared continuously with everyone within the organization. Successful businesses understand that “everyone is in sales,” so not just outward-facing positions like sales and marketing, but positions that also interact with contacts throughout the distribution network, such as accounting, operations, and shipping can positively (or negatively) influence a brand’s status.
Differentiating a luxury product from commoditized alternatives is difficult and frustrating, particularly in non-traditional luxury categories. Working with the right luxury consultant, experienced in product development, marketing, distribution, and sales, can be a valuable asset and objective guide and sounding board. They can help identify the truly unique, craft a message that conveys that quality, and tailor it to all stakeholders.
