The luxury sector is negotiating the tight rope between its traditional exclusivity and the open-all-hours, democratising nature of the web. It is a fascinating space to watch as new ways of enticing and engaging with the customer emerge.
This long Luxury Society piece explores the emerging influencers and how brands are finding their feet in this new dance. The most telling line in the piece:
“The internet is a chance for luxury, because in order to maintain the dream value of the brand, you have to permanently refuel that dream…”
Refuelling dreams repeatedly is easier when the shop front is really open-all-hours as the web makes possible.
Relevance. As thing go digital at a rapid pace, relevance is the holy grail for luxury brands too, as Rebecca Robins writes.
An even more fascinating movement among the legacy brands is the movement across brands – the “brand tangos” that boost their reputation through collaboration. Think the Apple Watch Hermès cross-over. Legacy brands are tapping into tech brands to increase awareness and connect with consumers. Tech brands are tapping into legacy brands for their heritage and exclusivity.
The resulting blurring of boundaries increasingly calls into question whether we will even be defining brands by sector in years to come.
Talent is central to this ongoing quest for relevance. Lately luxury brands have been poaching talent from among mass market brand leaders. The skills at a premium? Time to market and omni-channel reach.
“Traditionally reliant on in-store experiences, the luxury end of the market is slowly realising that online retail is a crucial factor in future growth. .. Luxury brands are looking for broader retail skills to match today’s omnichannel retail world, Twyford said.”
…
“Twyford explained that luxury brands pale in comparison to the likes of Uniqlo, H&M and Zara when it comes to their speed to market. As mass-market brands soar in their ability to maintain low-costs while still appealing to millennials, logo-reliant brands like Ralph Lauren feel static,..”
And finally, a luxury good we all desire more of — silence. The essay discusses advances in airlines and automotives, to create silence which may be physically nauseating — our vestibular system draws upon noise to give us a sense of balance and spatial orientation — and ends on a note which summarises why silence is truly a luxury good.
The hushed halls of affluence buffer the rich from the hubbub of poverty, but for the poor, the clatter of modern life—like other forms of pollution—is inescapable. And as noise continues its inexorable advance into the quietest eddies of wilderness, even the rich may find a silent retreat impossible to locate.
Bonus link: An impossible to locate silent retreat is what Rachel Nuwer found when she set out to locate the last place on earth without human noise. Two fascinating nuggets stand out:
Hempton and Krause hope that nations will adopt a quiet area program akin to dark sky programs. They are pushing for the US National Park Service to adopt such regulations in 2016, in time for the agency’s centennial. “I absolutely believe we will have our quiet places,” Hempton says. “Just like we went through with water quality, things have to get really bad before we recognise them as a basic value and clean them up.”
…
Where others tend to become uncomfortable in the disconcerting silence, Foy relished the chance to be completely cut off. But minutes into his stay in the chamber, he noticed that the silence was in fact broken. His own body, it turned out – his breathing, his heartbeat, even the scratchy sound his scalp made rubbing against his skull when he frowned – was betraying his quest for auditory nothingness. “The only time you’ll hear absolute silence is when you’re in no position to hear it, because you’re dead,” he realized.