Lured by the Luxe? Why Not Make it a Career?

Most European luxury brands originated in the end 1800s to early 1900s, and were then controlled by the designer and or his family after him.

However, by the end of the 20th century, most luxury brands were majorly controlled by conglomerates. In their bid to expand their commercial outreach, vertical, horizontal as well as geographic expansion was undertaken. New markets like Asia were tapped into. New demographics were sought to be serviced by virtue of democratisation. New product categories were categorised as ‘luxury’. The width, depth and variety on offer increased drastically. New markets brought in new cultural challenges with themselves.

Managing a luxury brand outside of its home country in Europe was no longer as simple as was perceived. A new stream of ‘Luxury Brand Management’ was curated and developed as a holistic management practice that could help new managers maintain the aura, the philosophy and the decorum of the luxury brand outside of its home country.

Developed in Europe in the 1990s, Luxury Brand Management is a specialised stream of management that creates skilled managers to act as brand custodians and ensure that the painfully crafted brand values and vision of the creator is not lost or diluted in cultural translations across continents and boundaries.

Additionally, luxury brands have long been admired for their product quality and how they treat their customers. They serve a demographic that expects nothing but the best, and these brands constantly strive to raise the bar. Managing luxury is far more complex than any other consumer category for the simple reason of its vast variety of product categories, demographics as well as geographies. At any single moment of time, a luxury service provider may have to deal with a luxury connoisseur as well as a luxury initiator. The complexities of their behaviour, response and expectation of ‘luxury’ will be completely and diametrically opposed to each other.

Luxury brand management is the blending of the right marketing campaigns to create and reinforce and retain the brand identity. An effective luxury brand management is one that develops a promise with a consumer, conveys the message of the promise, and lives up to it. Luxury brand management requires an understanding of how to market a luxury brand to attract a specific clientele.

Luxury brand management is all about analysis and planning of how to increase the perceived value of a luxury product.  A luxury brand manager is the one who puts this plan into action.

A luxury brand manager is responsible for conducting market research for luxury products, overseeing and organising marketing campaigns, product and distribution planning, managing brand budgeting and resources, collaborating with luxury designers, and supervising marketing assignments. 

Luxury brand managers promote luxury branded goods and services across existing and emerging markets. As more and more people around the world are becoming interested and financially able to own branded luxury goods, new luxury brands are employing innovative marketing and promotional methods to acquire new customers that is challenging the position of the established brands. In turn, the bigger and more established brands are exploring new markets. To further their businesses, luxury brands are employing experts (luxury brand managers) who can customise approaches to maintain brand loyalty of existing customers through exclusive offers and deals, and also build customer base in new territories.

In a nutshell, Luxury Brand Management is an interdisciplinary subject that applies management best practices to luxury services which help businesses in extreme value creation.