Why aren't you a luxury brand?

The reason is simple - and ironical. In a world of oversupply, we are running out of emotional  options. As markets have cluttered up with more and more, look-alike, work-alike goods that are bereft of EQ, consumers have taken it upon themselves, conciously or not, to go looking for brands that generate seratonin; that make them feel good about the outlay they are making.

Yes, market spread is polarising to keep pace with these radicalising attitudes, and I have no doubt at all that the middle will continue to shrink while opportunities at the lower, bargain end of the market and those targeting the top end will flourish. Either will work – providing your business model, ethos and systems are geared accordingly. Luxury – “make my aspiration come alive for me”. Or budget – “make me feel like I am getting a bargain”. But less and less between the two.

Branding is about helping people fall in love. Coaxing them to make irrational decisions. Not pushing them – because that doesn’t work anymore. Not tricking them – because that never worked past the first sale. Understanding them and their motivations enough to induce them to fall in love with inanimate objects and abstract services, not because of what they are, but because of what they have come to represent.

One of the biggest opportunities in today’s polarising environment is to look for a way to create a “luxury strategy” – to create products and services laced with ideas and emotive associations that people will fall for. And keep falling for.

That’s necessary because contentment is commoditising. Things that used to thrill us for a time now fascinate us for a minute – and then we’re ready for the next surprise. The key to success in this dynamic is not  less – it’s more. More of what these customers are truly looking for. More of what they aspire to. More of how they wish to see and express themselves. More of what they’re prepared to pay irrationally for.

Just like in any relationship, brands must be prepared to work to keep the magic alive. Otherwise the spark will die, and attention-seeking customers will go looking for that attention and interest elsewhere.

Inevitably that means finding ways to fund the surprises that customers are rapidly coming to expect as matter of course. If you’re not planning to be a “bargain”, and find those surprises in efficiencies, volume and price, my recommendation is that you make some rapid moves towards being a “luxury”, and look for ways to compete on surprise, scarcity and reward. As  many of you will have heard me say in my “The price is right” presentation, there’s less and less middle in the market today - and more and more muddle.

Decision disconnect

That’s exactly how so many businesses seem to be making decisions about their products. From opposing viewpoints. The business is locked into business decision mode – so everything is logically-focused. Research, product evaluation, customer behaviours, segementation strategies: everything is designed to break the case down rationally, so that it can be re-assembled onto a slidedeck and pushed through the filtering process of multiple decision makers. After which it can be handed to the marketing department, hopefully to have the humanity added back in. But it’s still logically driven. And most of the time it shows. Benefits and features stuff. Price information. With a big stare at what the competition are doing. No  empathy. No insight.

Customers of course are at the opposite end of the car, making decisions from the heart that they look to justify logically. In a world where they can find functionality at every turn, they’re looking for stuff that speaks to them. And because they increasingly just assume all the logic stars are in order (it will work, there will be support, they can buy this through multiple channels), they’re looking for things that align with their image and yes, their aspirations.

That’s why not all decisions are the same. Companies make decisions that make sense to the business and that they think make them better than their competitors. But sorry - that’s not how  customers decide. And therefore the criteria around decision success are potentially very different indeed. They can easily pass each other like ships in the night.

Great products aren’t grounded in purely logical decision making. They deliver emotional rewards that stem directly from understanding the customer’s predicament and the decision to  do something about that. They’re not necessarily better products. They’re not necessarily more packed with features. But they work because they hook the customer. Emotionally.

That, I believe, must be the next revolution in business case building – making the case for the customer internally and then advocating for that through the corporate decision making process. In other words, chasing the customer emotion logically through the company, instead of trying to impose the corporate logic emotionally on the customer.

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Bring them on

Great things happen when you wobble the world! 

Mark Di Somma 
Pusher, speaker, writer, driver 
Level 1/9 - 11 Marion Street 
Wellington, New Zealand 

T: +64 4 801 7720 
F: +64 4 801 7055 
M: +64 274 460 844

Meet and book him at www.markdisomma.com

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