November 7, 2011

Liveblogging PartnerCon 2011: What Defines Luxury with Lawrence Chan

Session Topic:  Lawrence Chan  (@tofurious)
Luxury is defined by exclusivity, yet the use of social media creates accessibility and democracy. With the ever-increasing ubiquity of online presences, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a luxurious cachet and allure. Learn how to communicate a desired luxury brand and increase your digital territory without undermining brand perceptions through social media.


What Defines Luxury?

(Audience) Money, High Quality, Limited Access, Perception, Exclusivity
(Lawrence) It’s nice to have 🙂  It’s not something you need, it’s luxury.

Social Luxury:  Tactics to support the strategy

1) Barriers to Entry

Lawrence Chan - PartnerCon 2011Luxury is subjective.   Is McDonald’s luxury?  Is it a need to have or want to have?  Is it cheap or is it available everywhere – yes.  Let’s talk about esoteric items like wines or beers.  Why is better wine, better?  Price?  Let’s talk about less esoteric items – water.  What’s the difference between San Pellegrino and Target water?  Photography is subjective.  Do our clients know the difference between good vs. great photography?  If it’s not about price, quality, or quantity…what is it about?  It’s about perception.  Social media offers a large amount of press and awareness but you wou

The Goal: “To be easily accessible, but not easily attainable” – Lawrence Chan

A – Attainability: The WPPI experiment; he’s telling a story of his WPPI booth and the line for folks to wait in line.  He was offering 5 free minutes of consult and built a line.

Establishing a high awareness of the exclusive event through social media, while blocking access, increases desire that cannot be satisfied among a wider group of people.  This reinforces Mercedes Benz as a luxury brand” – Lawrence Chan

Turn the tables around; ask your clients, “What made you decide to inquiry about our services?”

B – Availability: A donuts shop story of how every day they only sell 400 donuts and tweet regularly how many they have left.  How are you projecting availability?

C – Location: Story of Koji where they drive to random locations and tweet the location (where others have to meet them).  When you do a consult, where do you meet your clients?  Don’t do it at their house per se…with a luxury barrier, they need to come to you.  [LOL]…he’s talking about how to play hard to get works 🙂

2) Hour Glass Effect

Customer Service – the value of under promising and over delivering.  Showing a Burberry thank you card to one of their clients (who happen to tweet the note).  If you sign a contract for a set amount of hours, one way of increasing customer services is staying a little longer to over deliver.

Priority – Easy to find you, hard to hire you, once they do…make it red carpet treatment all the way.

3) The Almighty Label

It represents everything that encompasses you…your dress, your car, your eating habits..mac vs. pc.  Hollywood sign story.  Brand Association of Grace Ormond’s Platinum list value for example.  Showing signs of security, value, and  trust communicates value.  Example of the Express ‘Photographer’ pants…when you put a label to it, it communicates luxury.

4) Behind The Scenes

Reward your members with something special, something password protected even, something behind the scenes.

5) Communicate the Dream of Luxury

You are looking to communicate your luxury to: Your current clients, your future clients and the ‘never’ clients (the ones that will never be able to afford you).

Future Audience – Why is Emma Watson in a Burberry ad?  They are setting up a future audience so that those that follow her now will buy product when they have the money later.  How are you setting up and communicating to your future audience?

6) Conveyance of Ideas

Stories work when conveying an idea.  Watching an ad for Christian Louboutin shoes…a story of a shoe design creation by Christian by viewing into his dreams.  Having a relatable face to a brand is key in transparency these days.  i.e. Shooting behind the scenes videos gives proof and value to your brand.  The proof is in the pudding 🙂

Faces – Old Spice campaign example; The face of Pictage – Jim Collins; The face of your company?  YOU.

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Audience Q/A

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