might be the first brand that comes to consumers’ minds in association to
luxury fashion. This level of brand awareness is challenging and requires time
and effort to attain. It is the desirable level of brand awareness for luxury
brands.
As an illustration, take a moment to reflect on the first three brands that
jump to your mind when you think of luxury fashion. These are the brands
that have attained a high recalllevel within your mind. Now think of the
numerous luxury fashion brand advertisements you see in the print media.
How many of them do you instantly recognize? How many do you have to
look at several times or study closely before recognizing or establishing their
associations? The brands that you were able to recognize instantly are those
that have high recognitionwhile the others could have medium or low recog-
nition levels.
Luxury brands generally have the advantage of attaining a higher level of
global brand awareness than mass fashion brands. This is because luxury
fashion brands, as the name denotes, fall within the category of ‘luxury
goods’ and this offers an aspirational and unique quality that distinguishes
them from an overcrowded fashion market. As a result, consumers remem-
ber them because they crave for products from within luxury brands. Also,
the luxury sector is smaller than the mass fashion sector in size and focuses
on a global market, making it easier for the brands to stand out. However,
the task of creating brand awareness for luxury brands is becoming more
challenging especially with the lowering of the sector’s entry cost and subse-
quent expansion.How can brand awareness be achieved?
The major tool of brand awareness creation is visibility, visibility and visibil-
ity. This means achieving a high level of exposure for the brand among its
target consumer audience. Luxury brands should however attain high visibil-
ity without over-exposure. In other words, placing the brand to be seen, heard
and thought about by the right people with the aim of registering the brand in
their memory.
The effectiveness of brand awareness tactics varies between industries but
communications tools like advertising, sales promotions and sponsorships
can be used to increase familiarity with the brand and attain high brand
awareness. The luxury sector also has the additional advantage of the global
reach of the Internet, the increase in international travel and the globalization
of the marketplace to enhance rapid brand awareness.
In creating brand awareness, luxury brands face an additional challenge of
staying visible while retaining exclusivity. Luxury brands are elite by nature
and are required to maintain this quality and the status of prestige. This means
that they must be seen only in the appropriate communications media that
enhance the ‘luxury’ quality. Consequently, the process of creating brand114
luxury fashion branding