Relationship Marketing - Luxury Brands Get It Right

BFFs Kate, Rihanna, and Stella. Photo via twitter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “many consumer goods segments are suffering” but, the luxury market “is rich with promise.” This news is not surprising, even the casual observer can see differences between the distinctive clothing and accessories sold at luxury department store Neiman Marcus and the more pedestrian offerings sold at JC Penney.


Considering the clientele each store caters to it seems their marketing plans should be very different, yet their approaches to media-marketing show similarities. Both companies have brick and mortar stores, sell clothes online, and vie for consumer attention by staying present in popular women’s magazines.

Neiman’s and Penney’s websites both utilize a name-brand female designer with direct links from the landing pages to the designer’s wares. Neiman Marcus is pushing Stella McCartney Spring 2012 dresses at price points between $1,195 & $3,355; JC Penney sells Liz Claiborne new arrivals at price points between $30 & $50.  

How can Stella McCartney and other luxury brands demand prices vastly higher than Liz Claiborne and other mass-market fashiondicers? In fashion, price-point success is often about whom you know, not how well you sew. Luxury brands appear better at relationship marketing – building and maintaining relationships with key parties such as customers, suppliers, and distributors. Relationship marketing builds a marketing network; instead of relying solely on marketers inside the company, the network develops both inside and outside the company.      

In the recent issue of Marie Claire magazine all four brands are mentioned in articles by the editors. Both department stores paid for advertisements, probably expecting that they or the brands they sell will be highlighted. Neiman’s ad is not actually about the store; it’s about the new season of Lifetime’s Project Runway. The store portion of the ad is at the bottom eighth of the page. It simply tells fans to “shop the accessories inspired by the show at Neiman Marcus.” Penney’s ad, on the other hand, is two full pages imploring customers to shop because it’s Spring, “march is madness without jcpenney.”

One of the Project Runway judges, Nina Garcia, is also Fashion Director for Marie Claire.  Neiman’s strategy to merchandize accessories for the popular TV show Nina Garcia is associated* is likely what netted them and Stella McCartney (combined) almost five times the number of editor mentions Penneys and Liz Claiborne (combined) received in the magazine.

Stella McCartney hones other parts of her marketing network too. Kate Bosworth wore a Stella McCartney dress to a pre-Oscar party honoring Charlie Chaplin, as did actress Mia Wasikowska and tennis legend Serena Williams to Vanity Fair's Oscar parties. Kate Hudson says she and McCartney laughed it up when "I made every worst dressed list possible” in a Stella McCartney dress. Rihanna and Gwyneth Paltrow had a media-fueled Stella McCartney dress-off when both celebrities wore the designer to the Grammy awards. The photo above was tweeted by Rihanna during the Stella McCartney Winter 2012 Evening Collection Flash Mob in London. In it, Moss seems to say “Rihanna, if you keep partying with designers and making bad boyfriend choices, you too will be sleepy and bored at a flash mob.” Of course, with relationship marketing, be careful of the company you keep.

* Updated 3/2/2012: I finally watched the first episode of this season's Project Runway called "All Stars" and it appears that Nina Garcia is no longer a judge. The mentor to the designer All Stars is Marie Claire's Editor-in-Chief, Joanna Cole; she stands in for the role Tim Gunn played in previous seasons. Due to Ms. Coles close connection to Marie Claire I maintain that relationship marketing holds sway over the number of mentions Neimans garnered versus Penneys. - ssf