Cracking the luxury code when purpose matters

A few weeks ago I was asked to open the conference Arab Luxury World in Dubai and reflect on how luxury brands will crack the luxury digital code.

It seemed obvious for me to talk about why purpose is now the ultimate badge of luxury and how my 4 year old daughter and LinkedIn helped me understand that.

How did I get there?

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My young daughter’s favourite story is a Japanese children’s book called The Tomato Party. It’s about Hana a young girl who takes care of a tomato plant, growing and picking the fruit, so that she can use the tomatoes to organise a surprise ceremonial dinner for her parents at the end of the summer.

When I say favourite, I really mean favourite. Not only do we read this story every night, it’s also inspired her to grow her own tomato plant – and start planning how we’re going to sit down and eat the tomatoes as a family.

Why is she so obsessed with this particular story? Why does it resonate with her far beyond any of the others that we read together?

I asked her and understood that the answer is simple: it’s the first story that has connected Sofia to a sense of purpose. And that sense of purpose is something she can empathise with like nothing else. Even when it’s as simple as growing tomatoes to bring a family together.

The fascinating thing is that this connecting power of purpose in stories doesn’t decline as we get older. It’s just as powerful for adults as for children; it’s just as powerful for brand stories as for children’s ones; and it’s especially important, at this point in time, for luxury brand stories.

Why purpose is essential for luxury’s future

Bain Consultancy predicts an exciting future for the luxury market, forecasting growth of between 3% and 5% per year between now and 2025. However, in order to earn a share of that growth, brands must successfully engage Generations Y and Z, who will represent 55% of the entire luxury market (Source: Bain) by the end of that period. And research suggests that this will be impossible without a clearly expressed sense of brand purpose.

Just as with my daughter, it is purpose that forges a connection between a new generation of luxury consumers and any brand story.

Purpose is large but let me give you a few numbers:

-       64% of millennials and Gen Z are influenced by sustainability 
when making a purchase.

-       81% percent of Millennials expect the brands that they buy 
into to be transparent in their marketing and actively talk about 
their sustainability impact.

Source: BCG-Altagamma True-Luxury Global Consumer Survey Jan 19

Purpose takes luxury brand values that have traditionally been secretive, mysterious and timeless – and applies those values to the real-world issues and situations that shape this new generation’s mindset. It makes those values newly relevant in a way that sticking to traditional cues around quality, exclusivity and craftsmanship won’t necessarily do.

Purpose drives the stories that millennials want to hear – but it also provides the proof that the wider range of stories a brand tells are authentic. A brand with purpose doesn’t just claim craftsmanship. It expresses what craftsmanship means in the context of workers’ rights or scarce natural resources – by relating it to a commonly understood purpose, it gives the concept greater meaning.

Millenials and Gen Z like storytelling but what they want is storyproving. More than any other generation, this one is looking for transparency, for authenticity in everything they buy.

How brand attributes translate into purposeful stories

As a luxury brand, Cartier has always celebrated power and elegance in women. When this story is told with a sense of purpose today, it becomes a story of championing female entrepreneurs solving contemporary global challenges through Cartier Women Initiative Awards launched 3 years ago.

Guccci owes its existence as a brand and a business to its founder’s vision of scaling the skills and expertise of Florence’s artisan craftsmen to reach a wider audience– and doing so using high-quality natural materials. That links the label intrinsically to the people working for it and the environment that it exists in. Today that takes the form of Gucci’s Equilibrium Manifesto, formalising the need for balance between these different elements: gender equality, diversity, empowerment of employees and environmental responsibility.

In their own words, it’s an online platform that connects the planet, purpose and people.

And the impact of this purposeful positioning? It’s coincided with sales growth of 36.9% in 2018, with 62% of all the brand’s sales coming from millennials.

The most important characteristic of these senses of brand purpose is that they never feel manufactured. Again: Storyproving over storytelling.

The inherent authenticity of a true brand purpose brings stories into the present – demonstrating a brand’s instincts in action. It made absolute sense that LVMH and Kering should move quickly to donate to the rebuilding of Notre Dame, for example. It showed their instinct for valuing heritage and craftsmanship as well as their powerfully French identity.

And what happens if brands don’t have a sense of purpose?

No wonder companies are embracing long term values and vision.

Luxury brands could once earn fame and desirability by being enigmatic but over the years I’ve witnessed a definite transition towards telling more purposeful stories during my time in luxury marketing.

From my first experiences where the creative focus was mostly around products, through to my time working in advertising for the New York Times, when brands started marrying breathtaking imagery with compelling stories about their purpose as a company.

Now, at LinkedIn, I’ve seen this journey move on further. I’m watching purpose go from one potential marketing tactic to the single most important tactic: the cornerstone of brand and economic value.

And how do brands do that?

They break silos of communications, they bring together corporate, product and HR messages. They get closer to their audience and build a strong sense of belonging in being authentic and transparent.

LinkedIn used to be a place you’d come to look for a job. Today 85% of our users come to LinkedIn to engage with content and follow trends related to their interests.

And today, it’s not just that I’m seeing more (in fact most) luxury brands integrating purpose into their messaging on LinkedIn. It’s that this content exploring brand purpose is often among the most popular content on our platform.

The next generation cares. They have buying power.

I don’t know whether luxury brands will be able to inspire millennials to start growing their own tomatoes... but surely part of cracking the code will be in bringing a purpose to the brands’ DNA and communicating it properly.