Unusual Success Tip: Communicate Like A Luxury Brand

To listen click below.What I want to know is how Hermes charges more than $70k for a ridiculous foosball table.  And manages to sell them at full price. It doesn't play for you and it doesn't make cappuccino. The cost of materials is not that much higher than for a $1000 version. Who would pay a nice annual salary for such a foosball table???The answer is about the emotional aspect of being human, not the rational side.Luxury brands nail communication because they entice us to pay a price for something that has numerous lower-priced alternatives. No one needs to pay $223K for a purse.Luxury brands follow specific branding strategies to evoke certain feelings in relationship to the product. Let's see how executives can adapt these strategies to be more effective communicators at work.Luxury brands know most people mock their ridiculous prices. That's part of the strategy.

This is NOT luxury brand communication:

• Keeping quiet out of fear of offending someone.
• Avoiding uncomfortable conversations, like asking for things.
• Complaining about anything you don't like.
• Letting others decide for you because you're really not sure.
• Allowing others and life events take responsibility for your results.
• Waiting for politicians (aka "policy makers") to fix things.

This is the beginning of luxury brand communication:

• Being true to yourself.
• Setting high expectations for yourself.
• Exuding confidence.
• Refusing to worry about approval from others.
• Creating excitement!

IF You First Try Luxury Brand Communication and It Doesn't Work

Caveat: Communicating like a luxury brand can backfire at first.You may know that I love fashion. My style fetish goes way back and when I was 10 or 11 my mom enrolled me in sewing classes.Easy. I would be the next IT girl.Finally! Access to the most fashionable clothes ever - by sewing them. I got to pick out the patterns, the fabric and the accessories.Except that my seams weren't exactly straight. My button holes were ugly and my zipper installs crooked.Everything I made looked.... well, homemade but not in the Coco Chanel sense of "custom tailored."That is what no one tells you: To graduate to the Luxury level, you normally start with mediocrity and work your way up.(That's why you need Growth Mindset.)

What No One Else Tells You about Success

If you're setting big goals, you MUST be creative to achieve them. Communication is creative work.Many luxury brands started out as ordinary. A French man, Thierry Hermès founded the namesake company in 1837 as a harness (for horses) workshop in Paris. SHere's a message that can encourage you from NPR's Ira Glass, the creator of This American Life podcast.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

Luxury brand communication delivers value including:

• a sense of the transcendent (or meaning)
• excitement
• expanded vision of possibilities
• inspiration
• better taste

While we say we want to be practical, problem solving, lean, and binary.Yet in reality, we follow leaders who know what's important, take risks, are willing to look silly, create excitement, and INSPIRE us!Consider aligning with the true, luxury version of yourself.Have your opinions, share them, don't care (too much) if your audience agrees or thinks you're batty. Take a risk at your next presentation. Use a prop or tell a fresh story.You can't be crazier than a $73.4k foosball table.Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash