Marie-Claude Sicard’s biography mentions that she has outspoken views about luxury branding and marketing and this book exemplifies why this is the case. Luxury, Lies and Marketing is like marmite, you will either love it or hate it, and it will divide opinions. With this book, Marie-Claude has been able to achieve exactly that.
The paragraph “Luxury is universal. It is naturally produced by all tribes, societies, and civilizations that surpass the subsistence threshold and can use their surplus wealth for purposes other than purely functional ones, and whether it takes the form of a bear claw necklace or of a Harry Winston diamond necklace doesn’t change a thing”, effectively summarises the primary principle of the book on luxury and luxury marketing.
Marie-Claude takes us through a journey of the arts, the culture, the nobility and the cultural and societal norms that defined luxury and its perceptions in the past and present. There are only three chapters in the book, but each of them is an in-depth assessment of preconceived notions that need to be replaced, the clash of international cultures and how luxury brands work. Marie-Claude’s research and writing effectively flows from what is wrong about the thinking behind luxury, to how evolving cultural and societal needs is transforming viewpoints towards luxury and finally what luxury brands need to do to be successful.
The book uses conceptual frameworks to deep dive into finer aspects of how luxury brands work. But the real high note of the book is Marie-Claude’s research and the way she effortlessly links the past and the present in explaining how luxury brands are developed and marketed. None of the concepts or viewpoints in the book lies in isolation but is effectively intertwined with each other.
The book brings down luxury brands from their high pedestal and punctures some holes in the exclusivity notion around them. Marie-Claude argues why mass-market marketing principles cannot be applied to luxury. There is a universal ambiguity and contradiction between luxury’s need for exclusivity and the advertising / marketing budgets that big luxury houses and brands spend.
Marie-Claude successfully highlights and details out the emerging needs and patterns of luxury consumption and how they are different from the historical, nobility-driven concepts of luxury. The fact that the whole luxury industry is going through a dramatic transformation needs to be accepted, and brands should not be in denial. A sneaker clad, T-shirt and hoodie wearing consumer has the same right to walk into a Hermès store on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré as an immaculately dressed individual. She writes in detail about how these evolving demographics of the luxury consumer and the wide spectrum of needs around luxury are challenges that need to be embraced.
For any marketer in the luxury sector or for anyone wishing to widen their perspectives on luxury and luxury brands, this book will help in getting the concepts and principles right. Marie-Claude’s thinking is provocative, but it acts as a trigger in opening up a new way of thinking about luxury and marketing and how they are connected.
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