Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Can a B2B product be a luxury brand and marketed as such?

Patek Philippe & Co.Image via Wikipedia
The firm I work for, Harvard Business Publishing, is a division of the Hrvard Business School. Obviously our brand is very well known across the globe and the brand stirs certain emotions. High end B2C luxury brands like Bentley, Gucci, Aramni and Patek Philippe are also well known across the globe and also stir different emotions than a Dockers, Gap or Walmart.

Luxury brands command a price premium and usually justify the higher price by messaging the emotional benefits of owning such a product and implying that access is limited to only an elite few.
The P's are well defined in the marketing of luxury B2C brands but can a B2B brand also take some cues from these products in our own marketing?

Looking at a few of the luxury brand traits, you can see that B2B brands have the potential to market themselves as higher level than other products.
  • Pricing power: High
  • Emotional pull: High
  • Status: High
If your product does fall into the luxury B2B category, it would  seem that your approach to marketing should encompass the same attributes as B2C luxury brands. Off hand, I can't think of any true luxury B2B brands in the same category as a Rolex or Gucci. Can you?

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

See my winning blog post for the innovation contest for October

Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. He recently held a contest for blog posts on Innovation and one of mine won. Check it out.
http://bit.ly/kxRmq