Gucci, Louis Vuitton, & Vertu – Marketing Lessons from some of the World’s Most Exclusive Brands.

By

Conor Carroll, Kate Hurley & Ann Treacy, University of Limerick.

Creating luxury brands is a difficult marketing exercise. It requires heavy investment in marketing communications, excellent product/service quality, but above all these brands have to try to remain fashionable, which is notoriously difficult. Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Vertu are three successful so-called luxury brands, that retail to the high-end market. Both Gucci and Louis Vuitton are well-established brands that have been around for decades, even centuries. Gucci is a well-established organisation that has being designing and retailing clothes and accessories since 1921. The Louis Vuitton brand has been around since 1850. However Vertu, a relatively new kid on the block, has only just entered the luxury communications marketplace in 2000. Vertu sells expensive mobile phones that retail for thousands of pounds. Only a handful of brands can create a high status appeal among the world’s super rich (e.g. Ferrari, Rolex, etc.). These brands have to adopt innovative marketing strategies in order to succeed in this dynamic environment. What do they do differently to create this luxury appeal?

Marketers are moving from the traditional marketing mix approach towards greater use of experiential marketing. This is where customers are treated as both rational and emotional individuals that seek ‘experiences’ from products. The key is to engage customers in a memorable experience around the product/service, developing a relationship with customers, creating an affinity with them. The central aim of experiential marketing is to create an emotional attachment between the brand and the customer. Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Vertu provide this experience through their unique product image and