LUXURY GOING MAINSTREAM
The luxury marketplace used to target around 5% of consumers, but as brands realised that money was being left on the table, there was a deliberate softening of the definition of the luxury consumer. By various estimates, ‘new luxury’ (also known as mass luxury) incorporated between 40% to 60% of all consumers. One of the key elements of this is affordability and availability of luxury items.
Within this trend, consumers and luxury brands have been moving towards one another.
Even a luxury brand such as Louis Vuitton has decided to turn its promotion strategies toward the most popular of the media. Up to now, Vuitton ads domain was restricted to printed glossy paper.
The first Louis Vuitton ad campaign which will run on cable and satellite TV channels and in movie theatres around the world from February 15th doesn’t feature any celebrities, but ordinary people (prospective LV customers..?) and will be translated into 15 languages.
The 90-second spot, is themed around the question “Where will life take you?â€, and has been shot in France, India, Japan and Spain.
LV is the second high-luxury brand approaching TV after Gucci’s TV ad. -Will others follow? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5xCGZuvhWI
Insight: Generally the idea of luxury products and services is that they are limited and hard to come by for both financial and availability reasons. By going mainstream, does Lois Vuitton give off the wrong message or did they have no choice with the growth of mass luxury?
Tell us your thoughts on this topic.
Stay tuned as we will go into more detail next week about the US’ possible recession and how this might affect luxury brands.
