First Class of The Course

Lesson 1

Date 1: February 2011

First class of Managing Luxury Brands was an introduction class. The two lecturers are John Harrison and Serena Gossain.

Which topics did we discuss?

Well, like in every first class we did a little module introduction. Getting to know what the teachers are expecting of us. The most important part of this introduction was the explanation of the final grading for this course. We were given 2 assignments to finish by the end of this module:

-       1) The first assignment is a presentation on an existing or new brand expansion. I will think about this later. When something pops into my mind, it’s mostly a better idea than having a brainstorm session about it.

-       2) The second one is keeping a blog/diary/… That is exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m asking next week if it is possible to type it and do it like this, or to write it down and make it more ‘personal’. I’d figure out that will be Mrs. Gossain preference but she will have a hard time reading through my unreadable handwriting. It’s is in all our best interests that I do it like this. :-)

The 'theoretical' introduction to the course was coming from the book: "Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege", which I happened to read in the first semester. It was kind of nice seeing things you knew from reading that are used in an actual course. Money well spent!

The topics that we discussed from the book were the paradox of luxury brand management and we paid attention to an extract with some questions. 

Luxury brands are managed different than mass brands because of following characteristics of the industry:

-       -High Price

-       -High Cost

-       -Crafsmanship

-      - Limited Distribution

-      - Low Promotional Activities

-       -Advertising with no sophisticated copy strategy

(Luxury Brand Management, 2008)

The management a luxury brand company needs, is therefore completely opposite of what a 'normal' mass product company is expected to do!

Following questions were added to the extract of the book.

Q1: Are there any other examples you can provide where design has been the highest priority?

A:

 Yes, we can think of some examples! When you think of it, luxury brands are all about design. It doesn't  matter if the design is ugly or not. Design is design, hate it or love it. Maybe this is one conclusion we could give on luxury brands? All of them are design-related, and you even hate this or love it!

Q2: Can you think of an example of where the design code may have actually hindered or damaged a particular luxury brand?
A: What is the one thing that you don't want to happen to your luxury brand? Right, get taken over by the 'wrong' parts of the social class! What do I mean?

The right market for Burberry?

I'm not sure Burberry did plan on getting popular in this segment of the 'Chavvy' market!

Another problem for luxury brands these days is counterfeit products.

"Sir, you are my friend! I will give you a special price on my LV-handbags. Fake? What do you mean fake?"

It's not only the obvious counterfeit, though. The 'better fakes' are much more damaging. These products are sold for a little bit less than the original price, but are being sold in normal shops and stores. These counterfeits are less of quality and therefore more dangerous to the image original brand.

Q3: What are the important factors when designing a luxury brand?

A: Identity and values people could believe in and identify themselves with.

Quality of products

A certain inaccessibility

Generating a want-effect

Being an aspiration for people

Differentiate themselves from customers

etc... 

Many books are written on this topics but these were the ones my group (consisting of Chandni and Sonalika) came up with.

We also went over some slides with some intriguing questions like:

Who are the luxury clients? The rich? How rich? Everyone? There is no typical client!

What does luxury looks like? BlingBling or Subtle? Leather or Suede?

How do luxury companies communicate? 

        Experiences, Names, Logos, Materials, Craftsmanship, For services: Dress code, waiting list,etc.

        If we summarize all the above, there is one conclusion of how luxury brands communicate: 

Luxury brands communicate through all of the 5 senses.

The last assignment was trying to feel the brand identities and brand values of some different brands.

Our selection of brands was:

Jimmy Choo: SATC, HIGH Heels, Sexy, Crystals, Stones, Bling Bling. 

Hermes: French, exclusive, leather, heritage, horse and riding, scarves and bags, orange, exclusive, Victoria Beckham, Old Money

Gucci: Sexy, Italian/American, Tom Ford, The Gucci Logo, Green/Red

I think I did capture the DNA of the brands above... They are all fashion brands however, and since I am a guy I'm no specialist in fashion. Maybe we missed out something, but I am pretty sure I captured the most part of the brand DNA's.

As a final first impression of the course, I must say that I think the teachers are both real gentle people. I fear a bit however that we are going to see a lot of repetition from other courses of the semester during this class. 

Anyway, time will tell if I'm correct or not

Off to next writing.

Later!

Vic

Note to self: DO NOT FORGET TO DO THE THINGS FOR NEXT CLASS: SMALL PRESENTATION AND BRINGING SOME PACKAGING WITH ME TO CLASS.