The meaning of 'premium'
Editor's note: Kyla Lange Hart and Cheryl Swanson are principals of toniq, a New York consulting firm.
The world of marketing has become dominated by that oh-so powerful and yet ephemeral practice of branding. In the last 20 years we have seen everything from thingamajigs to mutual funds to health services to people become branded. As a marketer, the overall goal is to clarify your product or service's proposition and develop a relationship with the consumer. It may sound simple, but human relationships are not simple and consumers are fickle and demanding. This, combined with an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace, requires a distinct voice, tone, and manner for your product or service. In brand-land the key to success is walking the fine line between appeal, need, and differentiation. Just when you don't think your category can be segmented or nuanced anymore, trust that someone somewhere is innovating and will be challenging you sooner than you think.
It has been fascinating to work as brand consultants through the past two decades and watch and participate in the practice as it has evolved and matured. There were a myriad of changes in the '90s as mass products and services looked for new ways of reaching out and emotionally connecting with their audiences. We now seek to build brand cultures and visual vocabularies. It has become an anthropological, psychological, and physiological endeavor as well as a business proposition. In a broad review of projects from yesteryear and today a major branding paradigm shift was revealed. The desire to communicate "quality" has morphed into capturing and expressing the qualities of "premium."
Once upon a time (in the mid- to late '80s), almost every project brief listed "quality" as the critical brand descriptor. Thankfully, using quality as a major brand anchor has evolved to more descriptive functional and emotional attributes. Through research and more creative marketing approaches, brand teams are striving to carve out distinct strategies and personalities for themselves. However, we now see "premium" often listed as a critical part of a brand's persona. It has become the generic descriptor du jour. This is certainly a result of recent fat economic times combined with the insatiable U.S. desire to communicate "the best" or "superior."
To inform ourselves and our clients, we set out to better understand the meaning of "premium." What does it look like and how does it segment? How can it be used to distinguish a brand in the cacophony that is today's marketplace? As brand strategists it is important to identify nuance in order to control image. If yesterday's "quality" is today's "premium," how do brands use this to create differentiation?
Today's concept of premium has responded to a strong culture of innovation and a more sophisticated, design-driven consumer. As product cycles continue to decrease and the mass-to-class movement proliferates, the look and meaning of premium has no choice but to evolve.
The dictionary definition of premium in this context is, "what one has got before or better than others" or "having or reflecting superior quality or value." What does this look like and how can it be used in branding a product or service?
Premium branding breaks down into two major segments. These are, "performance premium" and "luxury premium." Each segment has its own culture and with its own visual codes and structural cues. Performance premium helps us to keep pace with life while luxury premium helps us to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Performance could be associated with a green light while luxury is more of a red light, asking you to stop, take a deep breath and reward yourself.
Performance premium - the go, go, go vocabulary
The concept of performance premium has reached beyond the bounds of automotive engineering to become a driving influencer in our everyday lives with technology, apparel, personal care and food innovation. In addition to automobiles, the world of sport has also been a major performance premium influencer. As the pace of life continues to accelerate, performance premium provides accessories and services for our daily lives that help us in our "survival of the fastest" society. Performance premium has basically taken the language of engineering and brought it into the personal domain in fun new forms. This began with the personal computer and has impacted everything from kitchen appliances to high-performance t-shirts that wick away perspiration. This is evident in the rise of grab-and-go foods and can certainly be seen in the burgeoning nutrition bar segment, i.e., Balance Bar or Clif bar, for those who don't have time to eat. Performance premium has an egalitarian attitude that is approachable and friendly.
Performance premium is about managing our very full lives with style and substance. The key characteristic is unique, human-driven design. It is not about the object. It is about the human being using the object. It is not design for design's sake. It is thoughtful design that merges organic and manmade design attributes to create something responsive and sensitive with the ultimate cachet of "cool." It packages the future in a soft, supple manner that is inspired by nature. The goal is to be both aesthetically pleasing and ergonomic. Oxo's kitchen utensils have built a successful business on this approach to the marketplace. The brands that define performance premium have invested time, money, and effort in industrial design to brand shape and own an experience. They are design-driven organizations that recognize the marketing power of design.
A consummate leader in performance premium branding is Porsche. The impact this car designer has on the global design industry cannot be underestimated. The company looks "to create a driving experience that is as unique as the driver." Performance has always been an inherent part of the automotive experience. Today's performance premium culture is beautifully illustrated in Audi's TT series. A well-respected but cachet-challenged brand, Audi re-invigorated its brand by embracing the new performance premium. With futuristic fun it fully explores its promise to be "uncompromisingly progressive." These car examples set the pace for a plethora of design commonalities shared by performance premium brands in other categories. The leaders of performance premium borrow and integrate from one another. For instance, Nike's Shox was inspired by car design, incorporating materials and ideas from a car's suspension system to "provide a smooth, responsive ride."
The visual vocabulary shared by performance premium brands is an organic and fluid shape complemented by texture, frosted finishes, and new or re-purposed materials such as advanced metals, neoprene, or rubber. The concept of light is critical in performance premium design. Light is used figuratively and literally as lightweight and light used as a color, texture, or finish. This is exhibited in the many translucent and clear color applications in products and packaging today. When light streams through an object, it has sense of weightlessness, flexibility, and movement. Light creates an ambience that is both friendly and fast.
Efficiency is key and sizes continue to shrink down and get thinner and thinner. The idea is to be notable but unobtrusive, as with Harman/Kardon's new audio speakers. There is an emphasis on organic, aerodynamic design but not at the risk of losing some sense of fun.
Lightness also extends to the materials realm with the extensive use of titanium. Heaviness used to be a measure of substance and quality but today's world has introduced lightness as a premium cue.
The granddaddy of inspiration for many performance premium products is Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. This extraordinary accomplishment created a new threshold for what is possible in architecture. It is a visual celebration of the human imagination. The titanium exterior acts like a skin that feels alive as it reflects the light and environment around it. It appears to breathe as it responds to its environment. The impact of the Bilbao museum can seen in everything from sunglasses to razors.
Color is a secondary cue for performance premium. The two reigning color/material cues are clear, seeing light through the material, and titanium silver. In terms of shape there are fewer and fewer sharp edges and true efforts to respond to human dimensions and natural lines.
A spectrum of "colorways" is appropriate in this territory, ranging from the brights to deeper hues but not heavy opaques which appear to weigh things down and impede speed. Macintosh and Nokia's vast color choices have brought a new color sensibility to technology and with it a sense of personality as well as purpose.
Performance premium has invaded clothing as it has rekindled the Samsonite brand. This old luggage brand is has committed to a future by developing high-performance travel apparel in addition to travel equipment. They talk about "aerodynamic form-plus-function features that meet your need for speed."
Gillette's new Venus razor for women beautifully exemplifies the qualities of performance premium. Its organic, fluid lines are both ergonomic and comfortable for a woman's hand. The razor is lightweight with translucent materials and light blues. Physique by Procter & Gamble is another personal care brand that approaches hair care with a modern engineering attitude.
Luxury premium
Luxury premium is the second major premium category. Brands positioned in this manner are thought of as "classic," with a variety of heritage cues and an investment in tradition and craftsmanship. Luxury premium's relationship to time is opposite from performance premium. It's essence taps a time that was slower, calmer, and simpler with a feeling of doing things the "right" way even if it takes longer. Time is a luxury today. Luxury premium asks us to slow down for a moment and to indulge. This sense of indulgence can be found in the upscale department store and in the local drug store.
Luxury premium offers an air of exclusivity with a privileged club-like attitude. American Express has positioned itself here for many years with the tagline "Membership has its privileges." In some cases this premium expression can be elite and instantly signal affluence as with automobile brands such as Bentley or Jaguar. These brands express an aristocratic kind of pedigree and are more a badge of status and heritage than about designing for the user. However, luxury premium does move far beyond the super wealthy realm. It is also embraced by brands such as L'Oreal hair coloring, which has always had a sense of indulgence with its "I'm worth it" tagline.
A distinct sense of hierarchy often exists in luxury premium which sets up a good-better-best scenario. This is indicative of its roots in the past where class structure dominated society. Color is often the cue used to indicate quality. This is certainly true of the American Express line-up of cards that range from green to gold to platinum to black. Each card color symbolizes a certain level of financial expenditure and therefore wealth. This crosses over to the liquor category where product color and packaging denote the good, better, and best options. The language of premium liquors evokes luxury and indulgence by articulating process (handmade; aged) and the rare, special nature of the ingredients. Very often time is an integral part of the value or quality assigned to liquor. The longer it has aged, the more premium it is. The "call" for Johnnie Walker is by color to indicate quality and status. Respectively, red, black, or blue is used to segment this brand. Patron tequila uses both the color of the product (gold or super premium silver) and a unique label color (yellow, orange, lime green) to signal the "level" of premium for a specific product.
The color territories shared by luxury premium brands are primarily opaque, rich colors. Metallic accents are common themes with an emphasis on gold. The shapes are primarily geometric and the packaging generally has elements of craftsmanship and dates or some stylistic detail evoking a previous era. The textures integrate traditional techniques such as embossing/debossing and hot stamping.
A master of luxury premium is Ralph Lauren. As an astute lifestyle marketer and designer, he has built an empire on the luxury premium premise of creating appeal through tradition and heritage. He is brilliant at creating a fanciful world that many would like to be a part of. He delves into the past and brings it forward with style, elegance, and flair and creates desire in the process. With his Purple Label collection of hand-tailored men's clothing and furnishings he is bringing back a style of American society in the '20s and '30s.
Science of precision
If branding as a discipline is the art of broad appeal then it is also the science of precision. Across both premium categories, performance and luxury brands use design to position themselves with clarity and precision. The marketing premise is understood and conveyed through visual means in each premium category. The objective is to be specific not generic in your specifications so that you can tell a rich and meaningful story with which to build a rich and meaningful relationship with the consumer.