1 When the wrong message has been designed for the target audience.
2 When the right message has been designed and sent to the wrong audience.
3 When the target audience misinterprets the message as a result of failed
sender encoding.
4 When the wrong medium has been used to send the message.
In designing promotional messages, it is imperative in all cases to define and
target the right audience. Luxury brands have the additional task of convey-
ing the brand’s essence and all its elements in each communication. This
means that the appropriate message, channel and execution style should be
utilized in addition to the communications design itself. The identified effec-
tive promotional mediums suitable for luxury brands are:
1 Advertising
2 Direct marketing
3 Personal selling
4 Public relations
5 Sponsorships
Advertisingis often defined to be a way of reaching a mass market because
it utilizes the mass media. It is also often wrongly implied that advertising is
non-personal and non-targeted. The reality is that although advertising luxury
products through the mass media such as magazines and television is viewed
by a mass market, the message within the advertisements are often targeted
to a narrow group, that is the luxury consumer market.
Luxury brands are niche brands and their advertisements are tailored
towards a specific consumer market. In addition, the advertisements of luxury
brands are a means of communicating the brands’ story, starting from their
history and development to their personality and image, products and
services.
Advertisements are highly important in the luxury goods sector, as they
enhance the visibility of luxury brands. As a result, luxury brands allocate a
large percentage of their earnings to advertising. The annual advertising
budget of the average luxury brand is between US$14 million and US$50
million, representing between 5–15 per cent of revenue in most cases. This
budget increases to approximately 25 per cent of the sales revenue with the
inclusion of other aspects of communications such as public relations, events
and sponsorships.
Traditionally, advertisements of luxury brands are mostly featured in fash-
ion magazines, business publications, airline in-flight magazines and other
high-end publications. This is because these publications are the most widely
read by the target audience. Current statistics from Luxury Briefingindicate
that Vogue, which is the foremost women’s fashion magazine, circulated more
than 2.1 million copies of its UK edition between January and June 2005.
chapter 5 145the art of creating and managing luxury fashion brands