Marianne, the founder of Rue 7 Paradis, an accessory and now luxury resale business, talked about luxury brands gifting large items to their clients “in the good old days”, and those days aren’t that far behind us. Pre-2020 brands would regularly throw in full-price items for good clients, whether these were perfumes, scarves, shirts, or knitwear. This has all but disappeared, leaving customers to measure a hospitable consumer experience by whether or not they received something to drink.
In a world where everyone wants to belong — brands replaced material gifts with experiences. Two things need to be understood for this to make sense in a business context.
1. Marketing has for years talked about community / fandom, turning brands from a monolithic entity into a shared value system. One that is more defined by its participants than by the brand itself. For example, by seeding brand elements such as craftsmanship, Frenchness, and humor across every touch point, these values will be reinterpreted and adopted by the community of vocal fans that evangelize the brand in their own online and offline filter bubble.
2. In order to relate, we desire experiences, no matter how minimalistic they are (remember that coffee, water, and Champagne you are being served from one paragraph ago?). But, the desire to belong supersedes the experience itself. This means that a weak/small experience, such as being served a beverage, causes people to feel connected to a brand in this case, whereas the need to achieve the state of a shared experience between you and the brand does not cause the same bonding. In other words, customers who experience hospitality together with the brand feel more connected to it than those who merely receive a transactional reward in the form of gifts. Don’t you dare to bring Love Languages into this.
Whether you subscribe to the Mark Ritson’s or Byron Sharp’s (/Ehrenberg Bass Institute) approach to marketing, side note — the answer is always both, having an emotional connection to something or someone that is caused by positive memories, increases the likelihood that we will think about them in any given context. This mental availability is a key driver for brands’ growth.
So don’t be fooled by the narrative that customers want experiences, which was first propagated to explain young millennials’ spending habits, as opposed to admitting that 20-year-olds of any don’t have the buying power for soft or hard luxury. Don’t believe me ? We are seeing the same nonsense conclusion being propagated with GenZ. It’s a matter of what they realistically can buy, not what they want to buy. Brands have now understood that there’s a psychological component to experiences that ties consumers to brands and drives a long-term lift in sales. So don’t be fooled the next time a brand offers you something to drink or to attend a little open bar at the boutique — it’s a more effective way to keep you loyal than rewarding you in material ways
Why do we think all those brands are opening hospitality offerings in the form of restaurants, bars, and hotels ? Well, that’s a story for another day.
This post was originally published on The Fabricateurialist
