Agenda Inc.

50 thoughts on luxury.

Printed in Paris July 2011

/50

#1 Luxury strategy should be an exercise in human psychology, not brand upholstery.

#2 Luxury like magic, art & religion is a way to connect the individual to their idealized self.

#3 Luxury products are the hardware. Meaning is the software.

#4 Luxury begins when a tangible object is transformed into the icon of an intangible idea.

#5 Luxury brands should commit to depth & values, over hollowness & hype.

#6 Luxury advertising is suffering from superlative fatigue. In a post-recessionary market, less is increasingly more.

#7 Disney has a huge amount to teach luxury brands about converting stories into revenue streams.

#8 Luxury brands need to rediscover their own identity internally, not to outsource the search to the wisdom of crowds.

#9 Luxury brands dont need to feel old & stupid around social media. After all, they were the original social media.

#10 Luxury used to be at the centre of all great cultural rituals. It needs to restore its ritual tradition.

#11 Luxury is a system of re-enchantement for a disenchanted world.

#12 Luxury can only see as far forward as it can remember back.

#13 If luxury brands dont incarnate a cultural truth, they become just empty, expensive products.

#14 Luxury survives precisely by being reinvented & reimagined; there is no other option.

#15 Successful communication strategy is about converting the brands story into the consumers story.

#16 Luxury brands invariably lose the truth by hunting for the facts.

#17 Best practices of communitybuilding and loyalty for luxury brands can be adopted and adapted from religion, cults and secret societies.

#18 The new strategic relationship between luxury and museum culture can represent salvation for both.

#19 Luxury consumers are in search of something more fundamental than keeping up with the Zeta-Joneses; they want something to believe in & something to belong to.

#20 Luxury brands that dont learn from history will be forced to repeat it; new luxury - for example - is at least as old as Voltaire.

#21 Luxury strategy is all about keeping the narrative on track.

#22 Luxury needs maintenance & mystery.

#23 In order to survive, luxury needs better access to skills & talents currently working outside the luxury industry.

#24 Luxury should feel visceral & vertiginous. Ideally, at the same time.

#25 Luxury needs to author cultural change, not try to follow it.

#26 Luxury brands need to offer deeper community engagement, not just higher community status.

#27 The Venice Biennale - & other approved venues of luxury inspiration are not the only places to look.

#28 Luxury brands need to find a more functional relationship with the past; one which is neither over-dependent nor disconnected.

#29 Luxury involves rarity; innovation the pursuit of new rarity needs to be a redoubled goal for all luxury brands.

#30 Luxury brands should overcome their intimacy issues, & go to meet the consumers who sponsor their survival.

#31 Pop-up stores do not often represent an apex of luxury creativity.

#32 Without more emotional impact, the great brand cathedrals of luxury are starting to seem a bit cold.

#33 Heritage = history + innovation

#34 Luxury brands operate in an unstable economic marketplace. Fortunately, they also operate in a more controllable marketplace for meaning.

#35 Luxury brands are belief systems, & part of a multi-faith universe.

#36 Luxury is about subtracting the ordinary & adding the meaningful.

#37 Luxury needs to be more magical, hardcore, provocative, radical, mischievous, shameless & ambitious.

#38 Luxury needs to be less nervous, cautious, self-conscious & easilyspooked.

#39 Digital strategy represents a way to communicate great ideas in luxury, not a solution in itself.

#40 Luxury brands succeed when they manifest the there-and-then as the here-and-now.

#41 Luxury is about finding the right mix between utter simplicity & overwhelming majesty.

#42 Luxury brands need to sell the individual denomination, not the overall religion of luxury.

#43 The Comit Colbert is increasingly part of the problem, not part of the solution.

#44 Luxury is not an institution but a relational entity.

#45
21st Century luxury = strategy +

chaos magic.

#46 Luxury is where the profane should go to get sacred.

#47 Hip-hop taught luxury to move. Sustainability taught luxury to feel. China is teaching luxury to think.

#48 Like design, storytelling is a key way for luxury brands to distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace.

#49 Luxury brands, like myths, are stories expressing fundamental values.

#50 Its time for luxury brands to take back the cultural revolution they created.

(C) Agenda Inc. 2011 www.agendainc.com