chapter 5 107the art of creating and managing luxury fashion brands- Consistency a uniform approach in designing every aspect of the brand
and in delivering every communication regarding the brand.
The role of these points will become clearer in the following sections. The
process of brand strategy development is stimulating and the results can be
positively overwhelming. This step-by-step procedure, which I prefer to call
an adventure, is explained in detail in the following sections.
The brand concept
This answers the question: ‘What is your name?’
The brand concept is simply the birth of a brand, in other words, the overall
idea behind the creation of a brand. The core concept of the brand must be
compelling and appealing to anyone that comes in contact with the brand. It
should be both relevant for its moment of creation but, more importantly, it
should have a lifetime potential. Prominent branding specialist Jean-Noel
Kapferer perfectly sums up the approach to the Brand Concept in the follow-
ing statement:
The best way for a new brand to succeed is to act like an old brand!In other words, the new brand should develop new products but conceive its
strategies like an established brand. If you’re wondering how this can be
done, then keep reading.
The brand concept is reflected through the name of the brand, its country
of origin, its history and story, its visual image, its logo, its colours, its shapes,
its language and its total offerings. Luxury fashion brands each have a distinct
brand concept that differentiates them from others although they generally
share the similar characteristic of ‘prestige’. For example, the horse carriage,
which is part of the Hermès logo, represents the brand’s beginnings in horse
saddlery production. The colour orange is also unique to the brand and the
taglines in the brand’s print advertisements are often in French, reinforcing
the brand’s foundation and country of origin. Also, Louis Vuitton products are
packaged in brown and this has become the colour attributed to the brand. It
is also difficult to think about Tiffany without thinking of the colour
turquoise, which is the brand’s concept colour. These are all components of
the brand concept.
The most visible aspect of a luxury fashion brand’s concept, however,
is the brand name. Traditionally, the brand names adopted are those of
the founders or major designers of luxury brands. The names naturally
depict the country of origin of the brands as exemplified by the following
brands: