How funky brands can be profitable16 Nov
A little sprinkle of perfume gives us a sensation of luxury
In one of my previous entries, called Funky Brands Defined, I published a list of attributes shared by most funky brands. An important one is the fact that they are not driven by innovative and creative ideas alone, but are or have the potential to be profitable. This, of course, requires a good deal of business development and brand building work done, and that’s fertile ground for SCHMOOZY FOX’s activities!
In today’s post, I want to talk about how your brand can benefit and become profitable from mass luxury brand positioning.
Mass luxury (often referred to as affordable luxury or new luxury) brand management essentially combines characteristics of building brands that have the luxury and exclusivity appeal, with techniques that can lead to relatively high sales volumes.
My marketing professor at ESSEC (a Paris-based business school famous for its luxury marketing program) was a former Armani guy. He certainly knew a lot about sustaining those “old luxury” brands like Chanel and Gucci (and Armani, of course). But he was nevertheless fascinated how some innovative companies managed to combine classical Kotler marketing with the know-how of luxury brand management by building extremely funky brands in the mass luxury segment.
Some of these brands were created completely from scratch (for example, Coach and Victoria’s Secret in the US, Agent Provocateur in the UK, and a Dutch brand Marlies Dekkers whose founder spoke in an interview on this blog), and others were born under the umbrella of already existing “true luxury” brands (for instance, Armani Exchange as a modest brother of the brand Giorgio Armani). Over the past decade or so, many brands were launched to satisfy a desire for a better lifestyle expressed by wealthier middle class eager to splash out on previously unaccessible items.
So, what can you learn from mass luxury brands in order to make your funky brand profitable? You’ll be surprised how many potentially funky start-ups fail just because they are disconnected from their potential customers. So, the most important rule of thumb is that you gotta get to know your consumers, their lifestyles and their desires as much as you can!
Stop for a moment doing this tedious market segmentation based on geographical location, age and gender. This stuff tells you nothing about your consumer’s deep emotional needs and desires. Unless you’ve understood what emotional connections they can make with the stuff you sell, you’ll be wasting your time.
Besides that, keep in mind the following factors that in my view may trigger consumers’ interest in purchasing your funky mass luxury goods or services:
- The lifestyle factor: Whereas splashing out on a single Gucci outfit is an extremely rare occasion for most people, and buying a Lamborghini is simply out of the question, a sizable market out there still wants to have a luxurious lifestyle. “Luxurious” can mean different things for different customers, and the trick is to find your loyal segment for whom your product will be a luxury. The right combination of such items as furniture, consumer electronics, food and drink, beauty products and fashion can do wonders and make our lifestyles luxurious and enjoyable. Not every item in your customer’s home has to be of super funky design and great quality, but make sure your brand can end up on your customers shelves!
- The self-worth factor: people appreciate goods and services that can contribute to their enjoyment of life (e.g. high quality perfumed candles, a meal at a gastronomic restaurant, or a visit to a spa) and feeling of self-worth. Do you know what contributes to the feeling of self-worth within your customer segment? If not, the first step towards making profits is to find that out fast and act on it.
- The funky factor: people like standing out from the crowd, and making a statement about who they are. They often express themselves through the clothes they wear, or items they use (computers, phones, cars). If your customers have created emotional connections with the products you sell, and even made them part of their personal brand, you’ve for sure kept the funky factor in mind successfully! Again, if you know how the attributes of your brand can enhance the funky factor of your customers, you’ve certainly moved forward towards a beefed up bottom line.
Mass luxury is the most profitable segment of many markets because attractive margins can be combined with sales volume. But the challenge is, mass luxury brands do not sell themselves . They are driven by hard-to-define factors like fashion, word-of-mouth, and constantly evolving preferences of your customers. If you’ve managed to apply a rigorous framework to identify these factors, and closely monitor them, you’ll certainly be on the path towards making sizable profits and building funky brands.
Finally, a good article on the subject that I can recommend is “Luxury for the Masses” by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske, published in Harvard Business Review in April 2003. Have fun learning the tricks of the funky brand trade! 
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