JKR

Pavé is an “ultra-lux” liqueur of the type you will have seen before, typically being brandished by music stars in photos from glamorous sponsored parties (but less typically spotted down your local). It’s “distilled through high quality diamonds” for purity. Ho hum. Pavé belongs to a particular category of premium products that unabashedly focus on a slightly vulgar “designer” modernity, inset Swarovski Crystals and all. As Russia and China continue to preoccupy marketers thoughts, we regularly receive briefs suggesting we “bling things up a little” and Pavé’s publicity photos suggest they might have a certain type of wannabe oligarch in their sights.

But it’s possible we are viewing the luxury market in these territories in a rather one dimensional manner. A report, “Deeper Luxury” by the WWF on the seemingly unrelated worlds of luxury brands and sustainability, made this observation: “In China, the concept of luxury relates to the Confucian concept of “face”, or personal reputation. There are two aspects to face: mien-tzu and lien. The former usually refers to material prestige and displays of wealth, while the latter refers to moral standing, the loss of which makes it hard to function in Chinese society. The Mandarin term for luxury may be translated as “show-off goods”, indicating that luxury consumption is currently driven by mien-tzu. In future, it may be driven to a greater extent by lien.”

Perhaps, as the WWF suggest, we are missing an appetite for premium brands with depth? The report also notes that in such territories, where the contrast between haves and have nots can be extreme, governmental intervention will also frown on too much inspirational marketing: “the mayor of Beijing has said that advertisements for luxury products “are not conducive to harmony”. The local market regulator added that “there is a problem with certain advertising not conforming to the demands of a socialist spiritual civilisation”. Consequently, the mayor of Beijing ordered all luxury billboards to be removed.

Maybe, for those of us designing remotely for such markets, we might want to dig a little deeper than the surface assumptions?