One of the top priorities of a good chiropractor is to make the body more adaptable to a changing environment. And when the economic environment is changing, your business needs to know how to adapt as well. It’s impossible to predict the future, but with any shift in the economy there are bound to be winners and losers. Of course, you’ll want to align yourself with the winners, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to develop a luxury brand.

With a luxury brand, you send a clear signal that your product or service will meet the tastes and standards of the highest levels of society. With the right voice and image, your brand can position itself to fulfill a certain set of desires and expectations that resonate with the upper echelon. And by connecting with this more elite audience, you insulate yourself from the volatility that leads other customers to rein in their discretionary spending.

What is a luxury brand?

For starters, let’s back up a bit and clarify what we mean by your “brand”. There are a lot of misconceptions, after all. And a lot of people use the terms to mean different things. Some people conflate the brand with the actual product, or maybe the package the product comes in. Others think of it simply as your logo, and maybe the colors that go with it.

Brand Personas

When we talk about brand strategy, we’re referring to your brand as the personality of your business. And when we develop brand personas, we like to stick with an archetypal framework. First impressions are everything in branding, and relying on archetypes allows the audience to have an immediate understanding of your personality.

Imagine you walk into a party mostly filled with strangers. You take a cursory glance around the room in order to size people up. That woman has a bright dress and waves her arms wildly as she speaks. So you can quickly place her into an extroverted category, with everything you already know about extroverts. Then there’s a guy with a certain type of facial hair and visible tattoos, and you can assume he’s a kind of a rebel or outlaw personality. And so on.

Of course, when you meet people at a party, you start by making a set of assumptions, which are probably not 100 percent accurate. But it’s a good start. In a lot of cases, you can get a fairly good idea of whether or not you’ll get along, just in the first minute or so.

Eventually, you can work your way to the finer details. But if you’re a tree-hugging feminist and he’s wearing a MAGA hat, then it’s probably not going to matter to you whether he likes Chinese food or Italian.

Now in marketing and advertising, we know we only have the briefest moment to connect with an audience before they flip the page or scroll to the next post. Associating yourself with a common archetype helps your potential audience to categorize you and know, even subconsciously, whether you two are a good match.

It may sound tempting, but you don’t want to appeal to everyone. In the end, it’s better to have a few loyal friends (or clients) than an army of fair-weather friends who aren’t going to stand up for you anyway. So save your time and theirs, and just zero in on the ones who are the best fit, the few who will really appreciate what you have to offer.

Personas and Luxury

Now imagine you just landed on Gilligan’s Island. Here’s an assortment of archetypes, if ever you saw one. And you can spot the luxury hut from a mile away, inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell III.

Now the luxury category doesn’t always line up exactly with archetypes the way it does for the seven friendly castaways, but it’s related. In other words, we usually work with a total of 12 archetypes, but the level of luxury is like a separate metric. Although certain archetypes have more or less innate luxury.

For example, if you’re using an Everyman archetype (think Gilligan), then the luxury brand will be a bit of a stretch. Or maybe you’ve adopted the Hero archetype, then you could really go either way with it. And if you’re working with a Ruler archetype, then you have the most natural fit for a luxury brand. (Think Rolex or Mercedes Benz.)

Wielding luxury

Some of the best examples of luxury brands are Rolex, Mercedes and Rolls Royce. In addition to the brand personality, they exude a clear sense of exclusivity. There’s element of: “If you have to ask how much, then you can’t afford it.”

These companies serve a clientele who have a different relationship with money than your ordinary fire fighter or school teacher. Their customers belong to a segment of society that can afford the very best. But the size of their nest eggs and their expensive tastes aren’t the only differences.

Along with those surface characteristics, the luxury clientele has a variety of other personality traits and what we call psychometrics. They may have different needs and expectations, as well as a whole different field of hopes, fears and desires.

And that’s where the brand strategy and market research come in. It’s essential to identify the defining characteristics of your target audience, and how those characteristics change along economic lines, between the more or less affluent strata of the audience.

Why to consider a luxury brand strategy

The reasons for developing a luxury brand are pretty clear. First and foremost, luxury customers have more spending money, so can make for a very reliable customer base. But there’s more to it than that.

With inflation rates hovering in the neighborhood of six percent, the sense of economic instability is palpable. No one’s quite sure what will happen next, but many are anticipating a serious blow to the middle class. If you depend on the middle class for the bread and butter of your business, then this places you on some thin ice.

Leveling up and positioning yourself as a luxury brand is one way to future-proof your business. The top one percent are far less susceptible to financial fluctuations than the rest of us, so if you can identify their needs and cater to them, then you have a strategy for a solid future.

An alternative strategy is to aim. If you’re looking to grow you business, it may sound counterintuitive. But last checked, the Waltons (of Walmart fame) were still the wealthiest family in the United States. There’e something to be said for the strategy of maximizing volume while minimizing margins. But if you provide a service, you’re probably better maximizing quality while reducing your quantity of clients.

But targeting the well-to-do is easier said than done. It takes more than a shiny logo and a higher pricing structure. Image is one thing, but consistency and fulfilling expectations are the cornerstones of a successful brand. Promising greatness may be enough to capture their attention. But in the end it means nothing unless you deliver and over-deliver, time and time again.

Elevating your brand

In the case of Rolex and Rolls Royce, as quintessential luxury brands, the sense of superiority is really at the core of their identities. But you can bring a touch of luxury to your brand without it overpowering your persona.

Too much of the luxury energy can feel a bit cold, and most of our clients are health care practitioners whose brand personas generally have a high degree of warmth and empathy. So the luxury aspect is something that requires a bit of nuance.

The good news is that it’s possible to elevate your brand without a radical change to your persona. After all, a complete rebrand can be a major undertaking. And it can be a little disorienting to your existing audience.

The exact tools and tactics will depend entirely on the specifics of your business. You’ll have to take a close look at your customer base and your ideal client. And you’ll also need to examine your competitive landscape. As you level up, you might find it easier to differentiate your brand, but you might also find yourself running into new competitors who hadn’t been on your radar before.

Learn more by reading our next article about Elevating your Brand.

Stay on top of your Brand Strategy

Need additional guidance? The Brand Strategy Workbook will give you a good starting point to answer some questions regarding your brand. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out for a Discovery call or join our online community. It looks a bit confusing and overwhelming, but if you take it one step at a time, it all makes sense in the end. You got this! 

• Schedule a Discovery Call with Pacha
• Join our brand strategy Facebook Community: Balanced Brands
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Dive deeper and take a look at these related articles.

• An Introduction to Brand Archetypes
• Adopting Brand Personas
• Speaking with Brand Voice
• Brand Strategy Services