“What becomes a legend most?” Remember the famous ad line when fur was in fashion, and that fame-saturated double-page photo shoot vision appeared in every fashion magazine. But that was back when there were real fashion magazines, not today’s celebrity showcases masquerading as style books.
Legacy as Liability?
Today, I ask the question from a different angle of the cultural prism: What becomes a legacy legend most? More specifically, a luxury legacy legend. Why luxury? Because luxe is where the money is, and legacy brands have an embedded baseline of that most difficult and expensive asset: consumer awareness of their origin stories.
But there’s a flip side to awareness. I’m talking about the risk of once-great brands suspended in hibernation in the depths of memory. These are the ones, theoretically at least, awaiting resuscitation. They may be tempted by some Chimera, that fire-breathing animal of Greek myth with a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail: AKA, stupid money and stupider debt. These luxury brands are charades as uber confident and a total denigration of customer respect and product knowledge.
Is luxury legacy a risk or a liability? And the answer is: If brands trade on a mutation of the relevance of luxury legacy that dilutes their value, they risk losing the past and the future.
Luxury Odyssey
As a trained future trends analyst, I have spent the past 18 months consulting for one of the premier legacy luxury businesses, which came of age in that long-ago and far-away ‘what becomes a legend most’ era. I have learned much on this business strategy odyssey. The focus is on the mission-critical centrality of the Ultra High Net Worth audience – and its influencers – as the last bastion of margin-accretive growth. The exploration showcases the obvious age-old edict: The rich really are different. During this journey I had the great good fortune of engaging with savvy luxury brand stewards, sales associates, private wealth managers, so-called creative agency executives, comatose retailers, and the journalists who cover them. These kaleidoscopic viewpoints coalesced into my current vision, and I have developed the reignition model for luxury legends built on seven non-negotiables.
Seven Truths in Pursuit of Genuine, Sustainable Growth
Truth One. The uber luxury market is the only one poised for genuine, sustainable, profitable growth. It’s time to forget about the ‘aspirational’ consumer, lusting after high-end, name-checked logos and settling for an over-packaged bottle of a marquee brand’s fragrance. Forget too, while we’re at it, the quaint notion of ‘masstige.’ Why? Because life changes at the macro-level while marketers change at the micro-level. Aspirations change. The definition of prestige evolves. The culture shifts.
Truth Two. Private equity and its doppelgänger, personal greed, are actively ringing the death knell of retail. Ask not Saks for whom the bell tolls. All the while, we avert our gaze from the obvious impossibility of carrying or ever repaying the gravitational pull of race-to-the-bottom debt. This all takes place during a technological revolution upending the notion that we’re willing to leave home for the acquisition of goods. Not clothing. Not jewelry. Not groceries. Not nothing. Unless and until it’s personally relevant. Interesting. Exciting. In short, bespoke.
Truth Three. The Ultra High Net Worth customer does not ‘shop’ in a mall or at the car dealership or at the auction house. They dispatch lesser mortals to deal with lesser mortals. Yes, the fabulous designer invites the equally fabulous client to fly in on the corporate jet to Paris or Milan, but it’s the stylist’s job to curate the wardrobe and speak with sales associates to deliver options to be chosen in the privacy of the client’s various homes. Knowledgeable human to knowledgeable human. How to reach the UHNW? See them as individuals. Meet them where they spend their time and money—unapologetically. Our model shows the power in valuing their values: Their non-profit galas, their family resorts, their joie de vivre pursuits, and their friends.
Truth Four. Successful luxury brands use their retail locations as ads that we walk into. They provide the luxury ‘lifestyle experience’ on display in case the merely wealthy—personal shoppers, tourists and husbands in search of ‘something’—stumble in the day before or on ‘the day’ itself: Valentine’s, anniversary, birthday, and the ‘I’m so, so sorry, and it will never happen again’ day.
Truth Five. Marketing and product creativity are at their nadir. This goes for the conventional creative and performative hype of AI. Luxe marketing demands the personal engagement and recommendation of ‘one person I know,’ in preference to some desperate cool hunt for anonymous ‘friends’ pestering us in bot-speak. Creatives who grew up in the world of CPG marketing are ill-equipped to understand the un-commoditized revelations of genuine craftsmanship. They are even less able to communicate through the dog-whistle tropes of exclusivity to be noticed by the one percent of the one percent. Equally, designers tremble at the notion of separating the exquisite workmanship of their vision from its ability to be manufactured on the cheap two oceans away.
Truth Six. Modern retail is a gauntlet to survive, not an experience to engage. Nor even enjoy. Much of our work over the past two decades has centered on a core understanding of the customer. Freud said it best: We all want to feel significant. We hunger for it. We mourn its loss. When we speak to consumers under hypnosis – yes, hypnosis – they describe that sought-after feeling of a great shopping experience as ‘I felt lucky.’ The easiest way to cheat that ‘lucky’ feeling is to mass produce and ‘buy one and get 50 percent off another.’ This generation of marketers has literally addicted consumers to price promotion. But for the Ultra High Net Worth, that doesn’t work. Paying a hefty luxury tax on their most recent fill-in-the-blank acquisition offers unstated bragging rights of the ‘what me worry?’ mentality.
Truth Seven. The long-heralded transfer of wealth from one generation to another is near. But it won’t mean an après moi le deluge spending binge. Rather, the old guard has set up Family Offices with savvy financial managers to educate and exert fiscal restraint in ways that may well irritate next-gen revelers. Thanks to ever-increasing longevity, boomers have had quite a bit of time to monitor their children’s and grandchildren’s behaviors, and they are not going gently into the night.
Legacy as an Asset
For any brand, revive your legacy, reconnecting with those who already know and love you. Reach out to past and present clients and their trusted advisors to prove you’re an investment-grade acquisition. Then ignite exploration by next-gen audiences for whom you may be ‘new to you’ but are worthy of respect. Finally, show up where they are and reinforce that you share their values and humanity. All the while, focus on the unmet need of those most willing to exchange money for genuine cultural currency. Then, stand back and watch your legacy transform your business into a goldmine. Finally, what becomes a legend most? The spotlight.
