Luxury Brand Management

Luxury Brands – 2011 Edition

If the financial gains that luxury brands experienced in the last year are any indication, we may finally be digging our way out of this recession. After a dismal 2009 with modest gains and quite a few brands experiencing losses, this year’s top ten luxury brand list should have companies brimming with optimism for the future.

Millward Brown Optimor released its annual list of the World’s Most Powerful Brands this morning. (A little background: Millward Brown is part of WPP, a massive company that’s made up of a bunch of advertising firms, including Grey and Ogilvy & Mather. Optimor does brand analysis for many of these firms.)

When spoken to Millward Brown vice president, Pierre Dupreelle, and his colleague Daniella Segal, who is a senior consultant at the firm, to get their take on the state of the luxury market. This year the category is up 19% as a whole, almost back to pre-recession levels.

There was some shifting of rank order in the latter half of this year’s list compared to last year, but with the exception of two companies, all made pretty stellar gains. The three big reasons for this?

Asia’s appetite for luxury
A commitment to heritage
And the savvy use of digital media

Luxury brands had been wary of the digital realm for fear that it would dilute their exclusivity, but many successfully made the foray into digital marketing this year. Chanel and Burberry (new to the list this year) both did it in innovative ways while maintaining their status.

So heres’s the list of World’s Top 10 Luxury Brands and their Brand Equity:

Louis Vuitton: $ 24 Billion
Hermès: $ 12 Billion
Gucci: $ 7.5 Billion
Chanel: $ 7 Billion
Cartier: $ 5.3 Billion
Rolex: $ 5.2
Hennessy: $ 5 Billion
Moët & Chandon: $ 4.5 Billion
Fendi: $ 3.5 Billion
Burberry: Unranked

How to Start the journey of Luxe ?

Study Brand Management or Luxury Brand Management in London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, USA or anywhere in the world. The courses range from short intensive programs to one year diplomas and degrees.

The MBA in Luxury Brand Marketing will provide excellent support for those planning a career in luxury marketing, brand management, retailing & distribution and communications. It also provides an excellent underpinning for those seeking to specialist in management consulting within the luxury goods sector.

Why Luxury Brand Management ?

Tom Ford is a self-communicating person-brand. designer and director as well. Diesel customers are a tribe of fans. Ferrari cars are becoming eco-friendly and Porsche is selling mobile phones. Steve Jobs created an uncontested market with the iPod. Karl Lagerfeld and Madonna designed for H&M. What if Benetton one day decides to start an haute couture collection.
Who is managing all these, and many other potential challenges? The Brand Manager, a specialist in shaping, preserving or renewing the identity of a brand, from defining a company’s vision, mission and its values, to the coherent implementation of effective and efficient marketing and communication policies.
This profile requires traditional economic and marketing skills, but also an ability to interpret post-modern reality applying a knowledge of aesthetics, sociology, history, philosophy, psychology and semiotics, but with a natural sensibility for innovative concepts: experience, emotional, viral and guerrilla marketing, tribal societing, low- and no-cost communication, convergent branding, buyology, storytelling, concept- and cross-selling, trendsetting, pampering, metabranding, cult- and love-marking, image building, hardwear and softwear, communication, trading up & down, heritage and vintage management, product placement, eco-nomics.

Handling both tangible and intangible assets, a Brand Manager supports major brands to achieve a real competitive advantage, a suitable positioning, and a good empathy with their clients; the Brand Manager helps to restore sleeping brands giving them a new life, follows the creation of person-brands, shaping their archetypes from the outset.

This kind of new multidisciplinary and flexible Brand Manager is without doubt a pivotal figure for companies facing an increasingly complex and challenging market scenario.

The master consists of three interdependent teaching modules:
- Sectoral, providing a good knowledge of the fashion and luxury systems, to produce an awareness of how such segments can feed on different factors (from economics to art), and to equip the student with business, marketing and communication management tools, leading to their effective exploitation.
- Technical, providing professional knowledge of every process in branding, beginning with the semiotic definition, moving on to logo and image building, and including the legal protection of the trademark.
- Innovative, providing a smart toolbox of new techniques for creating value through innovation.

Programme aims to:

Promote critical and reflective debate around the current discourses in Luxury Brand Management
Provide students with the skills and training needed for a successful career in Luxury Brand Management, in an international context
Allow students to gain industry insights through a dissertation or an internship-based consultancy project

What all you Study in Luxury Brand Management:

Fashion Brand Management: the fashion and luxury markets, specific aspects of a brand in these sectors, the principles of marketing and management, retail and customer relations.
Innovation Management: post-modern purchasing and values, innovative opportunities, brand-building and brand personality, lovemarks, cult brands, heritage and vintage, web and new marketing methods (viral, guerrilla, tribal, emotional).
Business Management: fashion and luxury business management.
Fashion Communication: brand values, image, publicity, the media.
Extra Media Communication: visual merchandising, fashion events, principles of styling.
Contemporary Art: creativity, art and fashion, convergent concepts.
Trend Setting: how to create trends.
Fashion Merchandising: product development, lead time, the fashion range and production network.
Global Economy: crafts, industry, finance, environment, from economy to eco-nomy, opportunities, risks, tools.
Multi-cultural: global, local, glocal, a cultural insight to the main fashion markets.
Fashion History & Philosophy: theories and models, the most important cases from the beginnings to today.
Trademarking: the brand from a legal point of view.
Brand Design: design basics for the brand environment, logo, site, packaging, means of communication.