Sustainability

The new trend for Luxury Brands is Sustainability.
According to many specialists in the sector, it is the new hype of CSR and charity events.
But what is sustainability?
Is it the way you treat the employees? The way you product? What happens with the products after they served their time? Sustainability is all about these issues.

Luxury brands have the responsibility of ensuring the same future for next generations as well. Because luxury brands are as precious as the earth itself!

What are sustainable goods? Goods like jewelry, sun glasses and watches are goods that can be a sustainable since the lifecycle of the products can be really long.

Patek Philippe made their USP of being a watch that is so sustainable that it is actually a watch that will be passed on towards next generations

Loro Piana is another brand that carries sustainability really high in their values. They use Vicuna fibres, while keeping them alive and breading them since they were almost extinct!




Some brand are really holding the values of sustainability in their 'hearts' and their DNA. On the other hand, almost all brands are doing it right now.
Do they really mean it, or do they just do greenwashing? Do they just go with the flow, as if it was a new fashion trend?

An industry that is under heavy criticism from sustainability point of view is the transportation industry. Cars, aircrafts, boats,... have a huge carbon footprint on this planet. A way to counter this criticism is being innovative and finding techniques to lower pollution. New fuels et all, are being tested when we speak by almost every single car manufacturer.

But why is the sustainable suddenly so popular? Due to the economical crisis, climate change and other worldwide events, people are getting more educated about the world problems. They suddenly start caring and they expect brands to do it as well!

The biggest wake-up call for the brands was the WWF report on luxury brands and their scores on sustainability. Not a single brand scores higher than a C+.
This raised questions out of the audience and society, so that luxury brands had no other way than changing the way they act.
This raises another ethical question: Do brands do it because of their brand values, or because of the value for their shareholders?

Raising awareness for sustainability nowadays is also done on worldwide events like the FT Business of Luxury Summit 2009, Beyond Green.

Later

Vic

Student Brand Extension Ideas

Yesterday, we have had the workshop of groups of 7/8 students each and they has to sell their ideas!

My group existed of Dana, Fleur, Lara, Nina, Ramla, Sonia and myself.

The Ideas


Dana:

Dana used Prada as a brand to achieve an extension for. She did propose Prada to make a make-up line. She felt that Prada already has a lot of products to complete the 'Prada-woman', except for make-up.






Fleur

Fleur took Manolo Blahnik as a brand and proposed them to make a hat-line.






Lara

Lara's Idea was launching a hotel for Hermes, in collaboration with Vertu and luxury car brands. The location would be at the lakes in Italy or Swizterland.






Nina

Nina proposed for Louis Vuitton bed linen










Ramla

Ramla had the idea of making a Louis Vuitton television in co-oporation with Sony.









Sonia

The last idea during my presentation group was Sonia. She proposed LVMH to buy an island in Brittany, the north-east of France, to build an resort on it as vacation resort. By invitation only!




My own idea you have already read during the previous posts in this blog. I won't go any deeper into it again.

Later

Vic

To model or not to model

Last class we have had a very interesting discussion about the use of models in campaigns and advertising.
What makes a company chose for supermodels and celebs, or the normal people on the street as subject and endorsers for their brand?

The choice is all about the dilemma of going for a recognizable face or for a credible person.
Some brands wishes to be a brand of the people.

Dove has made their decision on using 'real women' for the advertising campaigns. By using there women, they want to convince other women buying Dove, because the women showed in the ads are credible. They are 'just like them'.


This happens, when a brand wants to be on the same level as their customers.



It is doubtful that this approach will work for any luxury brand. Luxury brands have the intention of not being among the 'normal' people, but the brands want to have the image of being above the people.
The better option for luxury brands is using endorsees that people can aspire to. This fits the brand image better as well. No luxury brand wants to be amongst the people.

L'oreal, for example, almost always uses celebrity endorsement.
The company uses it for people to aspire to them.











Again, the choice for using normal people, super models or celebrities has to fit the brand image and brand DNA, just like everything else the brand does.

Later

Vic

Tiffany Brand Extension

Ok, the subject of my essay is called:

Tiffany Love Consultancy


Continuing on the theory of previous post, this will be a product development.
I am proposing Tiffany to design a consultancy service to arrange 'love' affairs. This is a new product/service that will be launched in the market they already operate in: Product Development!

The details of my proposition:
3 main aspects to the consultancy service
- Wedding Planning Service
- Honeymoon Planning Service
- General Romance Service

The wedding planner service could be anything, varying from location search, to cake selection and security. Everything you can think of you might  need during the wedding can be booked and executed by this service.

Honeymoon Planning Service is a travel agency-styled service that makes the honeymoon a vacation with stress and with exclusive things to do. From booking the hotel and tickets, up to airport pickup by limo and exclusive dinner reservations can be made by this part of the service.

General Romance Service can be booked just to make reservations in restaurants or limo pick-up.

More details are in the report, so I am not going to put my all my brilliant ideas on this blog ;)

I feel that by offering these services, Tiffany could enhance their Brand Values of Love, Romance and Care and become the ultimate 'Love Jeweler '. Therefore, this extension might just be able to work out great for Tiffany.

Later

Vic

Brand Extensions

The assignment for Managing Luxury brands was inventing a brand extension and saying why it would work.
Before I post a summary on my finished project, I am going to give an overview on how Luxury brands can extend.

There are 2 possible ways of extending a brand.
The first way is extending following a verticall model, or the pyramid model

This model describes how brands can go upwards or downwards, concerning their brand stretching.
Important for a brand is that they realize that any movement on this pyramid will affect the image towards the 'original' brand.



A good example to apply towards this pyramid extension is Armani. Armani started as a Luxury Brand, with a Couture line (the Griffe) but during the years they have let themselves slip down the Pyramid, introducing Armani Jeans (Upper-Range) and Armani Exchange ( the Brand). This have had an crucial impact on the image of the brand. It went from an Italian Luxury Brand image, towards an High-street brand image. Eventually, his profit has dropped and there will be a possibility of Armani getting into trouble.

The other way of extending, is using a horizontal model. This model can be best explained, using the Ansoff Growth Model

This model focusses more on other products or markets, instead of downgrading or upgrading.

There are 4 different possibilities in Ansoff's matrix.







Market Penetration: Using existing models in existing markets. The goal of this growth strategy is being aggressive in the existing markets by trying to get more market share, trying to sell more and make more profit.

Market Development: Using existing products in new markets. The best example I can give you are nose strips. This was originally intended to stop snoring. Now, new markets did open: Sportsmen are using it as well. ( Just a simple example)

Product Development: Using new products in existing markets. This is what Apple did when launching their Ipad. They launched a new product, on the markets they already operate in.





Diversification: Launching new products on new, and mostly unknown markets. This is the most risky extension a company can do. At this moment, I do not have a good example of diversification.



What I will do with Tiffany, is a Product Development. More to come.

Later

Vic

The Fall of an Icon

We were talking about Brand Values and Brand DNA before.
An important part of this DNA could be the founder or the designer. What happens to do when one of these go absolutely bonkers?

Who, in godsname, am I talking about? I think you know already.

Mr. John Galliano.

What did he do? Well if you didn't know already, he actually stated that Hitler is a hero. Bad move John, bad move!

It is a big shock in Haute Couture Country. John Galliano got fired from Dior. They stated that they don't want anything to do with Galliano again. Dior also apologized for what he said. This was probably the best thing Dior could have done, to save their own image.
Galliano's own brand will definitely suffer as well, no doubt. It is the question if he ever would get work again, because which brands want to identify themselves with a antisemitic designer ?

Dior learned a valuable lesson. No matter how good you stated your image, how good you built up your brand DNA, 1 single event, quote, dialogue, news article,... can ruin everything in a second.

It is up to brands how to deal with this crisis situation. Dior did the best thing they could do. They immediately got rid of Galliano to save their own image. Another problem arises now for Dior? Who is going to be his successor?