I’ll admit it - I have purse envy.  There’s nothing more frustrating than watching a group of 18-year olds strut the latest Louis or Longchamp.  The curious thing is that more and more of them do!  As a market researcher and avid people watcher, I can’t help but ask myself since when has luxury become so accessible?

Luxury has always been associated with beautiful, hand crafted goods produced in limited quantities and accessible only to the elite of society.  Luxury was the promise of history, of tradition, of quality and symbolized status, a status that the mere mortal could only aspire to attain. 

Today’s marketplace is the realization of what Silverstein and Fiske so eloquently described as “masstige” – prestige for the masses – over a decade ago.[i]  And while you and I (and pretty much anyone else), can now acquire that which was once out of reach, what is the downside for the brand?

Brand dilution is the greatest risk that makers of all things luxury take when deciding to jump on the masstige bandwagon. 

Last Friday afternoon, my spouse sent me this screenshot of the notifications on his phone:

Just Eat, the online food-ordering service, had sent him a text message urging him to stay home and enjoy a discount on their services.

The message is vague, but to anyone with an (un)healthy addiction to Netflix, the code “FRANK15” is clearly referring to Frank Underwood, the protagonist from House of Cards so expertly played by Kevin Spacey. And as all “binge watchers” know, Netflix released the show’s fourth season that very same day.

 As I mentioned in a previous blog, my spouse is a privacy-conscious man who claims to be impervious to advertising and uses ad-blockers on all his devices… But this one really had him stunned.

Was the ad a bit creepy and invasive? Maybe.

Was it so very relevant and tempting enough that we thought of cancelling our dinner plans? Definitely.

L’omniprésence contextuelle, ça vous dit quelque chose? L’omniprésence contextuelle fait référence au fait qu’une marque ne doit pas être présente partout et en tout temps pour marteler son message aux consommateurs. Elle préfère être présente au bon moment, dans le bon contexte et avec le bon message.

Cette tendance fait son apparition tout juste après celle qui a convaincu les compagnies qu’elles devaient être omniprésentes pour capturer toutes les impulsivités des consommateurs. Elle suggère donc clairement un retour en arrière pour prévenir les dérapages potentiels de cette omniprésence frôlant le harcèlement.

Lors d’une récente visite à Chicago, je suis tombée nez à nez avec un panneau publicitaire pour une marque de spiritueux : ‘Exclusively for Everybody’ (traduction libre : ‘Exclusivement pour tous’). Mon cerveau marketing et mon cerveau consommateur se sont dit, en même temps, ‘comment est-ce possible’?! Mon cerveau, constitué d’une bonne proportion de cellules anglophones, aime bien les arguments linéaires et rationnels. Cette partie-là s’est dit, ‘ben, ça s’peut pas’. Ou plutôt, ‘Wait, that can’t be’…

‘Exclusively for Everybody’ résume la campagne internationale lancée l’année dernière par la marque de vodka Smirnoff.

Est-ce possible de rendre l’exclusivité inclusive? Ma première réaction aurait été de vous dire non. Mais en prenant connaissance de la campagne, il apparait clair qu’elle ne vise pas du tout ‘everybody’. La cible semble plutôt être les gens authentiques, qui ne se prennent pas trop au sérieux, qui sont plus dans la substance que la superficialité.

The Influence of Marketing on Brand Image

As a semi-recent immigrant – coming up on five years now; Go Habs Go! – I find myself having different perceptions of certain brands than those around me.

Take the beer Stella Artois, for example. Even after all of this time, it still makes me giggle when I see it advertised as “Premium” Belgian Beer.

Back home, in the land of beer, chocolate and waffles (or Belgium, as some like to call it), Stella Artois has been around for centuries. But in Belgium, there is nothing premium about it. It’s one of the five mass-produced lager brands and is, quite frankly, perceived on the lower-end side of the quality spectrum (think Colt 45).