27 November 2009
	LUXURY REDEFINED Beyond aspiration By Sasha Planting

ask anyone to name the brands that to them epitomise luxury and names like Mont Blanc, Prada, Chanel, Jimmy Choo and Laphroaig might surface. Ask the team at AdMakers and you may get a different response. The problem lies in the definition of luxury. "We view these brands as being within the reach of the aspirational shopper," says CEO JP Fourie. "And as soon as that happens, in our opinion, a brand loses cachet." To make it, a brand has to have certain undeniable qualities. Take the Ferrari F430 for instance. It's marginally quicker than the BMW M3, it doesn't hold the road better, and it's less practical and convenient. Yet the F430 demands four to five times the price of the BMW. Why? Because it's beautiful, exclusive and elusive. It will never be mass-produced. "Ferrari made only 5 000 cars in 2007 for the world market. BMW made hundreds of thousands. It's a strategy of limitation," says AdMakers chairman Duan Coetzee. Pricing too is critically important. Luxury goods must be priced above the point where the upper-end of the mass market can creep in. AdMakers focuses on the rarified market occupied by those who live in the upper LSMs. "For the upper end of our target market, a Mont Blanc pen costing R5 000 is not a luxury," he says. "It's an expensive pen, but it's not a luxury brand. The very rich use Mont Blanc or its equivalent as most of us would use a Bic pen. "For AdMakers, luxury starts at around R250 000." So how does one communicate in this market? "If you are Rolls-Royce and sell 17 cars in a good year in a market like SA, then it's obvious the mass media is not for you," says Fourie. "E-mail and SMSes are an absolute no-no. And TV is not ideal, unless it is re-enforcing a particular brand image and status. Owners of brands like to be reminded that the car they own is beautiful and desirable to others." As you move up the income scale, behavioural patterns of the market start to change. These people do not work from 8 am to 5 pm. They don't like sitting in traffic for three hours a day like mere mortals. They think nothing of spending R100 000 on an international trip to fly first-class. They stay at the Banyan Tree Seychelles at à4 000 per villa per night, and then they book four villas, one for the children and one each for the babysitter and a travelling teacher. And then they stay for a month. And they seldom watch the soapies. So highly specialised targeted communication remains AdMakers' preferred strategy and produces results. The aim is still to get the client to respond positively to a message. If properly handled, the former can lead to the latter - even in the upper end of the market. You are still dealing with people - no matter how much money they may have. "Sensory Synthesis" is a phrase that AdMakers conceived years ago and trademarked. "The more senses you can stimulate, the greater the chance of someone remembering you in an overcrowded marketplace," Fourie says. It seems nothing is too much when it comes to attracting the right sort of attention.