HOW INCLUSIVE IS YOU EXCLUSIVE BRAND?

Exclusive – ‘Limited to only one person or group of people.’

Let’s face it, luxury comes with a high price tag and is therefore by its nature, exclusive.

At the same time, you want your brand to be open to a fully diverse audience of consumers, irrespective of their gender, race, sexual orientation, physical abilities, age, or nationality. In this sense you want it to be inclusive.

Louis Vuitton SS21 Campaign

The challenge lies in developing a sense of inclusivity for brands that are priced exclusively.

At SUM, during 20 years as a luxury branding agency we’ve often been called upon to address the inclusive/exclusive dynamic, and see step one as identifying clearly where a client’s products and their pricing fit into the market as a whole. 

Are you selling ‘High-end luxury’, like a £3,000 dress or set of earrings? Is your brand offering ‘Accessible luxury’, where product design is of very high quality but where a lower cost structure enables the price to consumer to be at a more accessible level? Or does your brand provide consumers with ‘Affordable luxury’ centred on more affordably-priced categories such as perfumes, skincare, scented candles, and wine? 

Inclusive/Exclusive Luxury Brand Diagram

The higher up the luxury pyramid your brand is positioned, the greater the challenge in connecting its image and narrative with today’s inclusive consumer landscape.

To successfully address this dynamic we work within a strategic framework that is intentionally ‘deliverable agnostic’. This helps to focus the thinking on the kind of relationship that your brand should form with its audiences before we start producing the various creative assets.

Once the strategy has been completed, each touchpoint is then aligned closely to the core concept, enabling you to always balance inclusivity and exclusivity in the right nuanced proportions to maximise your brand’s potential.