luxurybrands

Communicating luxury to the masses

Shaziya Khan, JWT, shows how luxury marketers can take advantage of a developing mass-affluent market

E ALL KNOW LUXURY markets are taking off. In mass and developing markets like India, luxury brands are growing volumes and there is promise of more. As a result, in marketing and advertising meetings, there is an emerging debate (one that will soon become global): how to communicate luxury brand messages to the mass consumer. The question is a puzzling one. It gets fiercely argued by opposing schools of thought. Do we downgrade communication to address the mass consumer but risk losing some of the mystique and aura of luxury; or do we retain the mystique of luxury communication but risk not having a true connect with the brands new and potential consumers? Beyond the push and pull of marketer and advertiser agendas, and beyond the particular category context, this article presents a high view a strategic direction for luxury brand messaging to mass consumers, now and in the near future. The affluent masses Luxury volumes have been spurred by a significant growth in the rich in recent years (see Table 1). Who are the new rich? They come in varied shapes, sizes and style quotients. Garment exporters, multinational bankers, college kids earning plum salaries at call centres or BPO (business process outsourcing) operations, wellheeled corporate wives, and successful entrepreneurs. What they have in common is that they have made it big. They
TABLE 1

want the world to know just how quickly and how far theyve climbed the social mobility ladder. Their consumption of luxury does just that, which makes these affluent masses the new target audience of luxury brand messages. The affluent mass consumer provides the biggest growth potential to luxury marketers flocking to mass and developing markets like India. Some of these are listed in Table 2. An intellectual starting point
Hypothesis 1

TABLE 2

Some international luxury brands in India

International brands
Omega, Longines, Rado Chopard, Christian Dior Bvlgari, Tiffany, Piaget, Harry Winston Mont Blanc

Presence in India
Up to 24 cities In 21 cities In Mumbai and Delhi 7 exclusive stores

Source: Kurt Salmon Associates, Technopak study, India Luxury Trends 2005

There is a historical parallel in Europe to what we are witnessing in India. When Latin books were printed in large scale in the vernacular languages which the masses could read, this created what anthropologist Benedict Anderson called an Imagined Community. Even though the masses did not know each other personally, as they would in a physical community, they nevertheless shared a fellow-feeling because they shared similar ideas and ideals. Famously, Anderson defined a nation as an imagined political community. Vernacular books enabled people to imagine this collectivity and played a key role in nation-building and peoples movements. As books went from Latin to the vernacular in Europe, luxury brand consumption is moving from the affluent classes to the affluent masses in India (and other developing markets ). This has created an imagined prestigious community. Luxury brands create a fellow-

feeling of prestige and status among the masses consuming them. For example, when a lady enters a social do wearing or carrying an original luxury brand, even those who may not know her personally believe she must be of high status. Consuming luxury makes her belong to an imagined prestigious community.
Hypothesis 2

In the past, prestige was due to real financial distance. Luxury was consumed mainly by an aristocratic elite. These were very few in number. So the prestige associated with luxury consumption was based on real financial distance. The masses simply could not afford luxury. They were just too financially distant from the paintings, jewellery, clothes, homes, and so on, that the aristocratic elite could afford. The key to the paradox of communicating luxury to the masses What is the definition of luxury? At heart, luxury is about exclusivity. It is also defined as lavishness, magnificence, comfort, sumptuousness, opulence, extravagance. Bear in mind the affluent masses. Today, given the rise in purchasing power, luxury consumption is no longer reserved for the few. This is a time in history when the affluent masses are no longer at a financial distance from luxury. But prestige and exclusivity has to be driven by distance except this distance is no longer financial, but intellectual and cultural. Communication is a powerful tool for creating this. So, luxury brand
World Advertising Research Center 2006

Growing wealth: better-off Indian households

Consumer classification Strivers Near rich Clear rich Sheer rich Super rich Income class (Rs 000) 5001000 10002000 20005000 500010000 10000+ Number of families (000) 3212 1122 454 103 53 Growth rate

17.50% 19.40% 21.30% 23.40% 25.90%

Source: National Council for Applied Economic Research, India. Income figures per annum at 20012002 prices

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Shaziya Khan is vice president and strategic planning director at JWT, a WPP company. She is currently involved with a regional planning assignment on Unilever brands.

messages must connote a sense of intellectual and cultural distance for its imagined prestigious community. Intellectual and cultural distance is vital for creating prestige or exclusivity. Legend has it that when George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel prize he was invited to become a member of the Club of 100. This was a prestigious club of 100 people, all leaders in their fields, and only when one died could a new member join. Yet Shaw refused to join this club. When asked why, he replied: I dont want to become a member of a club that wants me, I want to become a member of a club that doesnt want me. There is an Urdu couplet that makes the same point in a philosophical way: What we call the world is a magical toy. If you have it, it is like mud; if you lose it, it becomes like gold. (Duniya jise kehte hain, jadu ka khilona hai; mil jaye to mitti hai, kho jaye to sona hai.) In other words, if something is within your reach you dont value it as much as you value something that is far from you or beyond you. How to connote distance It has been said that luxury consumption is associated with a certain ceremonial tension which guarantees that you are indeed dealing with luxury. If you think about it, its true. Gentlemen, when you go to buy jewellery in a shop if you are buying small items you get them on the ground floor, but if you are buying some large pieces, they take you discreetly upstairs to the third floor. Ladies, how intimidating is it to walk into a luxury clothes store? In reality, so many aspects of luxury consumption are kept deliberately hard to get. This distance must extend to its communication as well. Different aspects of communication can connote distance. 1. Foreign names evoke distance: foreign brand names are often mispronounced by Indian buyers. The person who can afford to buy a Mont Blanc may ask for it as Mount Blank. Chanel perfume is called Channel (as in the English Channel) by
World Advertising Research Center 2006

its wearer. Yet this unfamiliarity with Swiss, French, German, American, Japanese names underscores the cultural distance and aura of these brands in the eyes of buyers, making foreign luxury brands so desirable. 2. Sign-off lines that you have to get tell a tale of distance: not every one knows what an advertisement is referring to in its when you know sign-off line. It is at an intellectual distance from you when you dont get it or have to struggle to get it. This ceremonial tension assures you that you are indeed dealing with luxury precisely what makes the brand seem so luxurious and desirable. 3. Artistic and graphic visualisation signal distance as an artist in our agency expressed it: the whole purpose of art is to grab your attention and transport you to a different place (Shashank, at his Mac, 7pm, December 2005). Fashion brands whose communication alludes to geisha designs (targeted to Indian women who probably dont even know what the word means), or those that show abstract visualisations of a petal and a line that reads the universe in a flower are among the most famous, well-respected and best-selling luxury brands in this market. The imagery of these brands is at a great cultural and intellectual distance from their target audience. And this has created an immense aura of prestige around them.

deliberately distant communication. This distance could be connoted in infinite ways mystique, cultural exoticness, artistic visualisation, and so on, giving marketers and advertisers a rich canvass for creating communication. More importantly, this role of imaging distance to evoke prestige gives a ripe, new and powerful logic to luxury messaging for the masses. It is a high view. One that unshackles us from current or forthcoming debates on this matter. In conclusion Intellectual and cultural distance matters more than ever. Initially luxury brands get consumed by the elite few or the nerd. As volumes grow over time, luxury brands get consumed by the affluent masses or the herd. The nerd comprises the elite who really understand luxury when they buy it. But the herd buys luxury because the nerd is buying it. Thus to sell to the herd we must talk to the nerd. The intellectual and cultural elite will be the only ones understanding luxury messaging. For the affluent masses, luxury messaging must remain at a cultural and intellectual distance just beyond their grasp!
Anderson, Benedict (1991): Imagined Communities. Verso, London, New York, 5187. Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty (1997): Case study on Alfred Dunhill. www. warc.com. Nunes, Paul & Johnson, Brian (2004): Mass Affluence. Harvard Business School Press, 10-45. Severin & Tankard (1992): Communication theories: origins, methods and uses in the mass media. Longman Publishing Group, U.S.A.,7-10. Trend, David (1993), Nationalities, pedagogies and media. Cultural Studies,8995. Vedpuriswar, A.V. (2005): The marketing of luxury brands. Hindu Business Line. Wright, Charles (1959): Mass communication: a sociological perspective. Random House, New York, 15

The high view If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch Rudyard Kipling, If As the luxury market grows volumes in India and other mass or developing countries, luxury brands will talk with crowds. The financial distance that evoked a real sense of prestige for luxury consumption is fast disappearing. It is imperative, then, that luxury brands keep their virtue be at a cultural and intellectual distance from their target consumers. This delineates a new and key role for luxury brand messaging to the masses. In the absence of real (financial) distance, prestige is to be imaged or created via shaziya.khan@jwt.com

July/August 2006

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