Luxury branding is a marketing strategy that seeks to create a high-end reputation and image for a product or service. Luxury brands are perceived as being exclusive, prestigious, sophisticated and of high quality. Because of this, their target market is often customers that understand and value these attributes and are willing to spend lots of money to purchase them.

The million dollar question becomes, ‘How do you create a luxurious brand that stands out from the crowd and attracts such customers’. Here are some tips to help you do that.

What is luxury brand identity?

Owning a luxury brand is about more than just premium pricing and having a fancy logo. It’s about a distinct and consistent brand identity that communicates your value and personality to your potential customers. Before you even start the process of designing your brands visuals, you must make sure you have figured out the following:

• A clear vision and mission for the brand. What purpose does it serve? What does it stand for? What sets you apart from the other brands in your category.
• Your target market’s needs, desires and aspirations. Do you know who they are? What do they want? How they aspire to be viewed by the world.
• How will you deliver a luxurious client experience at every touch point? How do you interact with your customers before, during and after the transaction or purchase? Do you know how you will exceed their expectations and delight them?  
• How will you build trust and loyalty with your targeted clients in order to maintain a long term relationship with them?

Why should you choose to make your brand a luxury brand?

What are the characteristics of a luxury brand? What is luxury brand design? And why should you go that route? Choosing to position your brand in the luxury space is a very good idea. There are many advantages that luxury brands enjoy. Here are just a few of them:

1. Higher perceived value

Positioning your brand as luxury increases the perceived value of your products or services. 

This is because luxury branding practices when done correctly do a good job of highlighting your quality, uniqueness, desirability and exclusivity. These traits naturally attract customers and are a selling point all on their own. This also allows you to charge a premium and thus have increased profit margins.

2. Increased Customer Loyalty

People love to be associated with things that are perceived as being exclusive and of high quality. Therefore those that can afford your product will make it a point to be part of your neck of the universe and those that cannot afford to partake will aspire to in future. This emotional connection oftentimes has very little to do with your actual product but more with the brand itself. This will help you retain your existing customers and gain new ones through word of mouth. And word of mouth is free marketing (Who doesn’t love free marketing?).

3. Greater Competitive Advantage

Every industry has a niche. But within those niches it is possible to niche down even further. Luxury branding allows you to niche down within an existing niche and isolate yourself on an island where you are the only star. By differentiating yourself as the luxury option in your niche it will help you to gain more market share.

4. Increased Brand Equity

Brand equity is the recognition, reputation and value of your brand within the market you operate in. Being a luxury brand improves that standing and this has various benefits. This improves your perception among investors, partners and media.

Planning your luxury brand identity design

Before you jump into designing logos, picking colours and writing taglines, you need to make sure you are on the right path in terms of strategy and direction. It’s one thing to create a brand that looks and feels right in your eyes, but it is a totally different thing to create a brand that speaks to and captivates your target market in a way that actually helps grow your business. Because of this you will need to follow these steps first:

1. Market research

It is always very important to understand the terrain that you are going to be going into. It is essential that you invest some time in understanding the industry that you want to participate in. Who are the top performers in your industry, especially in the luxury niche of that industry. These are the brands that you can look to as a benchmark for how well your brand is performing, both in perception and in actuality. 

Then you can find out who your direct competitors will be. These people are important because they are the ones who you will vying for the same customers and dollars with. Who are they? What are their brands like and how are you different or better than them? 

Identify who your customers are. How old are they? What gender are they? Where do they live and work? What other things interest them? All these insights will help you craft an ideal target audience persona. Once you know that you will be able to create a strategy that attracts the exact type of customers that you have identified.

Once you have done all of the above you can do a SWOT analysis of yourself as a brand. This will again be very useful information that will help you when strategizing for your brand.

2. Define your brand strategy

This is the stage where you establish your brand vision, mission, personality and goals. What is it that you stand for? What is it that you are going to be doing that brings value to the market? How are you going to express your own personality as a brand and what goals do you aim to achieve? 

After you have defined all of this, you can create a complete brand strategy that will allow you to achieve all of the things you have described in the previous steps. This is what all top brands do and it does not happen by mistake or even overnight. At this point you will be ready to start designing your brand identity.

How do you create a luxury brand identity

Now for the fun bit. How do you go about creating a beautiful luxury brand identity that can compete with the world’s best brands? Here are some of the ways that you can make your brand identity look and feel more luxurious:

1. Simplicity

Ever heard the saying, “Less is more” ? That is very true when it comes to luxury branding. Simplicity is often associated with luxury. Think of how a Rolls Royce is very quiet even at high speeds, or how clean and minimalist the inside of an apple store is. You can also see this in the minimalist logo we designed for Zapporrah. It is a simple clean serif font that acts as the main identifier for the brand. This all lends itself to the notion that the more simple a thing is, the more sophisticated it is. This applies to brand identities for luxury brands. Think of the logos for Tom Ford and Chanel. They are simple, clean and minimalist. They do not have to be the star, because the quality of the product is the star of the show.

2. Colours

The next place where you can express the luxury of your product is in your use of colour. Luxury brands have an amazing use of colour. They do not use more than 2 colours in their visual identities. You can go down the route of using a darker colour which feels more mature like the way Dior uses grey or how Chanel and Tom Ford use black. We  did this when we did the brand identity for Hashtag and used navy blue in the identity we designed for Bucks County Earring Co. Or you could go for a colour that stands out more and is very distinctive. Great examples of this are Veuve Clicquot and their signature yellow label or Cartier with their beautiful red and white packaging. We opted for this route when we used a beautiful coral and white colour scheme for Brightspark Bridal. Either way, their use of colour is very important to their brands perception and visual appeal.

3. Messaging

Your brand’s tone of voice is a major part of the brand’s identity. Quite literally, do you talk the talk of luxury? Language has a way of evoking emotion and affecting behaviour when it is used in the right way. This is a very valuable tool in the arsenal of selling your brand to your target audience. The art of storytelling can elevate your brand to the very top echelons of luxury and should not be taken lightly. Think of famous examples like Mercedes Benz tagline, “The Best Or Nothing” or L’Oreals, “Because you’re worth it”. They both make your customers feel like they are making the right choice by going with this option because it is more luxurious.

4. Imagery

The imagery you use to accompany your brand is also very important. It is part of the story telling feature of your brand. Make sure that your imagery looks the part. The subjects and their surroundings must look luxurious. The images must make viewers aspire to be like the people in the ads or have the things that are in the ads. Imagery can be applied to various touch points in your identity such as your print and tv ads, social media posts and catalogues. They also help foster a human connection with your brand and give the viewer an opportunity to see themselves in a different light. Brands that have done this very well include Tommy Hilfiger and Dior. You can also see it on display in this beautiful campaign by Ralph Lauren

5. Quality Materials

The physical touch points of your brand are also very important. You may have designed a beautiful logo, with great colours and a thoughtful tagline, but if it’s printed on ugly flimsy paper, it won’t have the desired effect. Your customers are going to come into physical contact with several of your branding elements such as your packaging, business cards, store signs etc. It is very important to make sure that you use only the best materials to make these items. It is no secret that people keep the bags and boxes that they receive after a purchase from Louis Vuitton as a status symbol. They do this because the materials themselves are luxurious, independently of the product they purchased. Another great example is Voss’s glass water bottles. Apart from the bottle itself being beautifully designed, it is very high quality and people began keeping them as vases for their flowers and various other uses. Watch here as the designer of the Voss bottle talks about it. We paid extra attention to the materials used for the label tags and shopping bags for BOW London. The tags were made from a high gsm laminated card with a high thread elastic string connected via a gold finished ring. The shopping bags were also made of a gsm laminated paper, with a rose gold finished embossed logo. To top it off we made sure that the handles were made of a luxurious fabric that was pleasant to the touch.

6. Differentiation

So we have listed various things that the world’s top luxury brands do with their identities. But it is very important to also have something that differentiates your brand from the others in your industry but also other luxury brands. What you chose to use as a differentiator is totally up to you, but make sure that when you choose it you do it right.

Conclusion

Overall, deciding to make your brand a luxury offering requires a lot of thought, planning and precise implementation. But if done correctly the rewards are very much worth it. If you would like to chat to us about helping you bring your dream of having a luxury brand come to life, please contact us and we would be happy to take you through it.