Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Luxury brands. They do not tell a story. They are creating a legend that is inspiring and it creates a really strong and deep desire to join the group, to join the brand, to be part. It's a really strong feeling of belonging. And don't forget that people buy luxury to be part of this. When people are carrying a Louis Vuitton bag or when people are navigating on a yacht, people are considered because they are members of the group, of the family of the story.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Welcome to the society Gal podcast where trailblazing female entrepreneurs and creatives come together to spark change and build their dreams. This is where your passion meets purpose and together we're crafting a future where everyone has the tools to succeed.
Welcome to the society Gal podcast. We are so excited to have Amandine here with us to talk all about luxury brands and her amazing experience working with them. So we're just gonna jump right in and what got you here to a place where you're working with luxury brands and helping other people to build luxury brands? You have a really amazing story and I can't wait for you to share with everyone first.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me today. Well, my path is really classic. I studied marketing, communication and brand management as a student in university and I always wanted to work in luxury and fashion industry. But I was told that it was impossible because I had a lack of contact, often working and a lack of experience. As a young graduated, it was disappointing. I really wanted to go through that. I also wanted to leave my city because I was at that moment living in Bordeaux in the south of France. And this city is big, but definitely not Paris. So this is where I wanted to go in order to follow my dream. So I waited and after six months I just found a job in Paris in the fashion and private selling industry. So it was absolutely amazing. And my job was to recruit models to manage private sales and to be the creator director for photo shootings in studio or in amazing places in Paris such as the Louvre or anything. So can you imagine that as just a young graduated from the suburb, from the countryside of France? It was amazing. It was insane. And I stayed in that job for like, yeah, two years, three years and a half. And I was recruited in Geneva, Switzerland to work with luxury brands, also for a private sales company. So it was really amazing. My first management experience and after two years and a half, three years, I had to come back. During that moment, I started to work for a tech startup in my city and I was the only one employee in co working in Bordeaux and the other part of the company was in Nice, in the south of France. And I was acting as a marketing and communication manager alone for this company in Bordeaux. And as I was in a co working, a lot of people were asking me, other entrepreneurs were asking me like some advices in front of the coffee machine and we had a lot of discussions about that. And one day someone, someone asked me more than just an advice in front of the coffee and I was like, okay, I think that maybe I need to start a consulting business or maybe something in order to help beginners into marketing and communication topics. So this is what I did. It was in April 2018 and on my way months after month, I found it that I was more drawn into luxury brands like I was doing when I was in Paris or Geneva. And I decided to come back to my first love and specialize in branding topics and with experienced entrepreneurs because it was more my stuff. So this is how I came here and today. So I work with spiritual, female and with entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and CEO's from all over the world. And I help them create, manage their business and reposition also their business into luxury one.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: I love it. I love that you have experience, which we'll talk more about as we dig into the topics, but more experience. And not only just in the service based industry, but with all sorts of luxury brands and working in different positions within the luxury world. I mean, you have really great insight on who wants luxury, who they are and what they want specifically. So let's dig into that. Let's dig into what you call the three pillars of a luxury brand. So tell us a little bit about those three pillars and how everyone listening to this can up level themselves to become that luxury brand and reach those higher market clients that are ready to pay for a more luxury, amazing experience that we have the ability to create. So go ahead and dig into that.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So the first pillars, and this is from my point of view, this is not the truth. This is my truth. From my experience and my past experience. The first one is, to me, exclusivity.
A luxury brand to me is really rare and exclusive. And this exclusivity is usually created by the price and the availability of the offer, all the products you deliver. The perfect example is Hermes. When you go to an Hermes boutique, the brand embodies that so perfectly. This is a sale assistant who is offering you an appointment to get a really expensive bag. And this bag comes from a kota. So you cannot just jump into enormous boutique and say, well, let's give me a brick in 35, you can't. You are offered the opportunity to get a luxury bag because the sales system that you are seeing is. Yeah, is seeing that you could be an amazing representant of the brand by carrying this bag. So honestly, this is really, it's not so complicated. And you can, for example, create like vip membership. You can create limited offers when offering your services so limited in time limit, limited in the number of spots available, you can create waiting list. The goal is to create desire. Really, really create desire in order to get people the desire to work with you. And you can also create behind the scene offers. This is what I do. For example, with my business, I created some offers that are especially dedicated to my current clients only. So if we didn't work together previously, you have no access to this offer. These offers are absolutely invisible on my website and some are visible, but it is specified on my website that I cannot do that with you if I didn't do branding with you before. For example, I do not offer websites if someone did not made his or her branding with me previously. I also offer some services that require to be sure that the person I am working with will be a good match with me. Because for example, we will have a really close or intensive one to one together. So this is why I only make these offers available to women I already worked with previously. So exclusivity is the really first pillar of a luxury brand, exclusivity.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: When you're talking about that, I think it really pushes people to create a higher quality service. Right. When you can only serve so many people with an exclusive offer or service, you only serve a certain amount of people and therefore there's more you can put into it. Like you were talking about, only working with people who've worked with you before or who are more experienced entrepreneurs, because you know that you can serve them best. At that point. I have, I think it pushes us as business owners to create the most high quality service because only a few people will be serving with the high quality service.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And when working with this kind of exclusivity, yes, you are working with less people, but you are earning more because you are pricing more and you can deliver so much more to this person and you can be absolutely dedicated to the service you are giving and the quality of what you are offering. Honestly, there is no good or bad positioning. You can do low cost, you can do mainstream, you can do premium, you can do luxury. I'm not here to say you must do luxury brand. This is the better positioning. No, everything is okay, but you just need to be consistent and to assume what you are doing. And if you are doing luxury, if you are doing exclusivity, excellence, you need to price in the right way. Sometimes when I see something like affordable luxury, to me, it's a marketing nonsense. You cannot do affordable luxury. By definition, these two words are not matching together. Luxury is not affordable because if you are doing luxury, you are doing tailor made offers, you are doing excellence. And all these things have a price. So this cannot be affordable. If it's affordable, it's disappointing because you are not bringing the expected quality of what you promise.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Awesome. And then can you speak on? I think you were talking about excellence. Yeah, speak on that pillar. Excellence.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Yeah. This is the second one to me, maybe this is the most important one. Excellence is an amazing work ethic. It's really high expertise from you, the founder, because you know what you do, you still train to learn continuously and stay on top. You are offering crazy quality in the offer you deliver, in the products you craft. You are having an insane sense of detail. The sense of details that you can have on luxury boutique or in luxury five star hotels. And this is luxury. You have sophistication at its finest. You have over delivery. This is really important to me, over delivering. And with all of that, you are creating an unforgettable, an unforgettable experience. And to me, excellence is the key factor. This is the intrinsic value you must already have in you if you want to create a luxury brand. Because. Because you can raise your prices. That's easy. Everybody can raise this price. You can create exclusivity by some marketing leverage. That's not so complicated. But if you don't already have excellence in you, like if you are a beginner, entrepreneurs, and in your previous jobs, if you didn't have, if you didn't already have this excellence in you, you will never have it. Like, how can you create a sense of detail? And this is why to me, excellence is really the key factor. This is where you know if you're able or not to create that luxury brand and to bring it successfully.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And even if you don't have it individually, you can have that vision to delegate to someone on your team or someone that can have that attention to detail to be that front person to make that happen. I'm not saying like, yeah, you can't do it just because you don't have that attention to detail. Everyone's very different with their personality, but there are people that have that work ethic. Someone may have the vision, right? But someone may be able to implement it way better. And so I love how all of these are working together. I like bringing it back to price, where rarity, one of the big pillars, is by the price. Like, it's rare because of the price. And I think a lot of us think, like you were saying, okay, we can do luxury, affordable luxury. A lot of people try to go towards that affordable luxury thing, but you really can't offer the service that is best, like, the best possible thing without the price that's going to support that. Right? Because, like, you can't put the funds in or the work and or the time to actually create that experience at that price point.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: This is why the fact that luxury brands are expensive, the price is really the third pillars to me, when you think about a luxury offer. Usually these offers are custom made, excellent. So they need time. And how could you give that time if you are doing small prices that are affordable to everybody? If you have a thousand person working with you, you cannot offer the pillars of luxury. And that's really complicated. And when someone tell me that Chanel is doing affordable luxury by offering, like, lipsticks at $40, for example, or Chloe is making sunglasses for $400, yes. But to me, it's not luxury because these glasses are almost crafted in China, in industries, and the lipsticks are not made, like, handmade by a craftsman or anything. It's made in factories next to maybe l'oreal, other lipsticks. It's just the packaging, which is better, and maybe one or two components inside, but it's not crafted. It's not made with love by hands, tailor made and everything. And this is really important. This is why you cannot just put a logo, increase the price, and say, yes, I increased the price, but it's not too expensive. So this is affordable luxury. No. Brands are just creating these kind of offers in order to allow people to buy a little piece of the legend, a little piece of the brand, and to let people say, yes, I have my lipstick, too. So I am part of the group, I am part of the brand. It's not really luxury. I'm sorry.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I love how you explain that, because I think a lot of people, I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening to this, I think fear going up to that price because I think no one's going to buy or anything. But I like how you said, it's not just the price that's going to raise, it's the whole experience of exclusivity and excellence, like that whole client experience. And I think if you do have a passion for serving and putting every tiny, amazing, detailed thing into that experience and making it the best for that person, and like you said, a longer process that you can be a luxury brand or a luxury business and so off that kind of. What are your thoughts on competition when it comes to competition? Because it's like, you know, again, people are like, well, I don't want to be too expensive or, you know, but when it comes to luxury brands, how does that play into competition as far as like helping you stand out as because you are luxury, because you are in a higher price point. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:14:00] Speaker A: So first of all, I just want to say one little thing about the price. If people are listening to us, don't be afraid about rising your price and don't rush about that. This is not an obligation to go from like 200 to 5000 because being aligned with your price is the most important. And if we take an example, Tony Robbins today, who is working and doing coaching for 1 million, he didn't start at that price. Maybe it started by doing $90 sessions. What is really important is that if you already have the pillars like excellence and this idea of exclusivity, you can rise your price regularly and slowly just in order to feel challenged but comfortable at the same time. Not too comfortable because if we are staying too comfortable, it's not a good thing, but raising your price slowly. Dollar 50 a coaching session and maybe in one year you will be at, at 200 and this is great and you will learn, you will get experience, you will train, you will become better, a really good expert and with the experience you will increase quickly your prices. But if you don't feel comfortable, don't put a 2000 coaching session just because you feel that it's the right thing to become a luxury brand. If you're not aligned, it will not work.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Having the goal or who you want to become and implementing that into your business right now, implementing luxury pieces right now, slowly until you build to that brand. But I love what you're saying of just that you can be that, like you can develop that. It takes time, but as long as you're looking at that like Lighthouse over there of the luxury brand, you can become, you can do stuff right now to build that right now and make, you know, your business become luxury.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is also an inner process. Like, you know, you feel more and more confident and it will be okay. Sometimes it's really quick, sometimes it takes a little bit of time, but that's okay. And if you have goal, everything is going to be okay. To answer to your question about competitors, by definition, luxury do not have competition because luxury is not based on a market. You know, when someone is creating a luxury brand, whether it's in fashion, in cosmetics or anything, they are not looking at the market, at what the market is doing. They are just paving their own way and going and creating their own legend. They are creating their own story, their own definition of their market activity, and they do not watch at what company do. This is the definition of luxury. They are creating the legend. They are trend trendsetters. They are not trend followers. So to me, honestly, I absolutely never watch at my competitors, especially also because I am in a creative field and if I go and watch what other people are creating, I am scared of being more than inspired. So I really don't want this. So I do not watch what competitors are doing because honestly, I don't care. I am doing my way and doing how I feel and that's it. And usually what I say to my clients is that the only moment where they need to go and see what their competitors are doing. It's when they are working on their unique selling proposition in order to define what they are doing better than others, what can differentiate them from the others, and that's it. And this is also important about the price, because for example, if you are offering a coaching session or maybe whatever, offer at $100, if you are going to see what your competitors are doing, and if you see that your competitors are pricing maybe 150 or 90, you don't know how to position. Because we need to think that these persons just base their price on their own fear, on their own perceptions, their fear of flak, their imposter syndrome, for example. Maybe their mom just said, oh my God, you are so expensive, darling. So they decided to put the price lower than what they wanted. So if you are pricing according to others, you are basing your price on all the fears and all the perceptions of the author. Honestly, you really need to think about your own value and what you are bringing to your clients. If you feel that you, your price is better at 200 than 100, go ahead. And if you are excellent, if you know how to explain what the value is and what you bring to the table, it's perfectly fine. And if you feel that you are more expensive than the market you studied, if you don't follow my advices, just don't do that. But if you feel that you're more expensive, just relax and you will find the people who will see your own value and show what you can do, show your work. And if you align with that price, it will be okay.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I love how you explain that, like, luxury doesn't have a competition. That was just perfectly explained how long it doesn't have a competition. It's true. I mean, they're trailblazers. There's someone that's making their own way. And I truly love that because your advice just on looking at other people, I've never really seen it that way. If you're looking at other people's almost insecurities and how, you know, how they're positioning themselves as out of their own, you know, story, which is actually really interesting. I love that, that. So thank you for breaking down those three pillars of a luxury brand. I think there is so many great, great, great points you made in there. So let's dig into what are some steps someone can take to begin this process of creating luxury brand and becoming this in themselves with their excellence, but also within their business. How can they start building that? Because it's something that you help others with. So let's hear how someone can do that right now. Hey, this is Dana from society gal. And I wanted to take a quick break to tell you about the society gal Academy, the exclusive membership that helps entrepreneurs like you launch, grow and scale your business. Join weekly expert led workshops, access to on demand courses, and connect with a supportive network of go getters just like you. Are you ready to elevate your business? Visit society Gal Academy today.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah. There are. To me, there are six steps and plus one, because before starting with these two steps, there is something to do before. To me, it's interesting to do a brand owner with it and to ask yourself the right questions. If you already have a brand, you can ask, how is your brand already perceived by your audience? And how do you want your brand being perceived by your audience? It's not because you want to be seen as something that your audience is seeing, what you want to show. So this is really important to analyze that, to ask people if you already have clients. If you're not just launching a brand, you can ask yourself, what are the things that you like and you don't like in your current brand? If you have one, it's also important because it will help for the future work. And why do you need to reposition your business or to position your business as a luxury brand if you are launching a new one? And I give you a hint, if you just want to make more money, this is absolutely not the right reason. It's not just a question of money. So, yes, if you want to embody this excellence, if you want to embody this exclusivity, yeah, these are the good reasons. And obviously you need to raise your price, but it's more than like a reward of your excellence.
And the last one, maybe the good question is, do you already have this excellence in you in order to lead your luxury brand? And then when you answer to all these questions, you can go ahead through the six steps. So the first one is the brand pillars. So there are so many brand pillars, such as mission, vision, values, etcetera. So, for example, the mission is you need to ask yourself, why do you do what you do? What is the desire deeply burning on you? What drives you in order to lead your business? And for example, one of my clients, she's an intuitive business consultant and she's only working with women. And her professional goal is to create the biggest professional french speaking networking in the world. And this is really interesting because her mission is, is never again someone will say to a little girl that she cannot achieve her dreams. And I have thrills everywhere when I'm saying that. That's really powerful. And this is insane, because every action she takes with her business has only one goal, to lead her business throughout this mission. So this is really powerful. And this is what will give so many power to every actions you take and to your business in general, then you can work on your vision. And what is really important here is to work on your short term, mid term and long term vision for your business, but also for your market. This is really important because working on your business and the vision you have will help you take the right decisions. For example, if you are rebranding with specific colors or with a new name, if you have a midterm vision saying that in five years, maybe you will launch in it, you will take some decisions that will help your brand match with America, maybe with Italy, and maybe with other countries. So this is really important, because even if it's not tomorrow, the vision you have may help you to take the decision that will have impact in the future. And this is also important to do that for your market, because when you are speaking about your market in interview, for example, it can position you as a strong expert and a visionary leader. So this is really important to work on that vision. You can also work on your values, your feelings, your ethic. I have a client who decided to write a manifesto and to put it into his brand guide in order to show his commitment to his clients. So this can be really powerful. The second step to me is building the brand legend. Because luxury brand, they do not tell a story. They are creating a legend that is inspiring and. And it creates a really strong and deep desire to join the group, to join the brand, to be part. It's a really strong feeling of belonging. And don't forget that people buy luxury to be part of this. When people are carrying a Louis Vuitton bag or when people are navigating on a yacht, people are considered because they are belonging to that they are members of the group, of the family, of the story. And what is also important is that that people do not buy luxury with a rational mind. They are buying because of the emotion which is generated by the brand. It's an emotional buying. It's not a rational buying when buying luxury. So this is why it's so important. I have a client who had really, really difficult and severe illness. And she decided to create her legend around that in order to explain how she felt, how she fights against this illness, how this illness transformed her life, in order to transform her in a coach and to help other people. And when she's telling her own legend, she succeeded in federating people around her. And people identify with her as she creates emotion. She empower people by telling her story. The third one, and the third point is working on your target audience. This comes from exclusivity, because as we saw, luxury brand is exclusive and we are not made to work with everybody. It's the fact there are like 8 billion of people on earth and we want to create exclusivity, so we cannot work with everybody. So the work here is to check which niche can you serve and who you can serve in the most efficient way possible and where you are excellent at. These are the three points that can help you to define your target audience. And this is really important because, because if you know who you are talking about, it's easier to work with these people and to sell them, because this is our goal. Even if in luxury, you do not say, I want to sell you something, but it's a fact we all need to sell. And yes, this is really important. I have one of my clients, she was a coach, and she desired to work with really experienced entrepreneurs in a really specific niche. But at the same time, when she was publishing on Instagram and in her newsletter, she was doing really basic advices because she felt the need to also talk to beginners, entrepreneurs, in order to help everybody to get the amazing business they deserve. And as a consequence of that, she was also doing like 50% of her offers with such low prices and she wanted to be positioned as a luxury brand. So it was absolutely inconsistent.
Yeah, it was not possible. So we worked together and she discovered that it was easy to do that because it was easy money, it was easy advices. And at the same time it revealed also that she had like a kind of imposter syndrome. And it was easier to talk to beginners entrepreneurs than to experienced entrepreneurs. So she worked about that with her coach, because I'm not a coach. And together we decided to work on her content, on her brand score expression, on her prices, on her whole. And what is important to say is that it can be really challenging at the beginning because when you are doing that, when you are repositioning your brand, when you are increasing your prices, when you are changing your content, it's challenging because you can lose followers, you can lower your turnover. It's a fact. Why? It's just because your audience is renewing, so someone are leaving and some new people are coming. During that time you can experience your business slowing down a little bit because things are moving, things are changing. But at the end, like few weeks after, few months after, she was really happy because things get back like normal. But it was challenging and people need to understand that also a rebranding is always challenging because you are asking a lot of questions about you, about your business, your foundation. So yes, it's a deep work. It's more deeper than just doing a logo.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's inner work and business work which when it. I think it is beautiful that there is a slow time in that transition. I think like you said, a lot of people freak out about the transition from middle market to high market or changing markets, but that's the perfect time to work. Then you have time to work on your business instead of people who have like 50 million clients can't work on their business. Like you can't work on your business when you have all these clients to serve at a really low price. So when you do transition, you let go of that. You have all this time to just like make it excellent. And I also like how you said earlier about how you need to ask yourself, where are you excellent. Like where is your excellence? Because like the example of that coach of she wants to work with more experienced entrepreneurs compared to beginners. She could work with beginners, but she feels she can serve at her highest excellence at the, you know, the more experienced stage. So I love that question. That's such a good question to ask yourself because you could do a lot of things, but you're going to be excellent at one really great thing. So I love that.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like, you know, hypnotherapist, you can, you can help people stop smoking, but maybe what you're excellent at is, I don't know, maybe helping new mom not to be too stressed because of their postpartum, for example. And this is where you're good at. This is what you love. And yes, you can help people stop smoking, but what you're good at and where you are excellent, it's this is that niche. And you can price more by doing that, by helping this niche, because you are an expert in a really specific niche. So go ahead and have fun and become this expert the world is expecting. So don't be afraid of that.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: And when you're in your excellent stage, you're going to feel the best. Like you're going to thrive and not be people pleasing or have that imposter syndrome so much that you were talking about. I think that's where, you know, being in your excellent zone is where you're going to thrive the most. I like that.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. We have the fourth point. After we talked about, we already talked about it, the unique selling proposition. So what do you do better than anyone? What is your expertise and what is what I call your HDP? Your highly desirable potential. What is your hdP? And don't be afraid, again, to be really specific, because this is how you will create a niche where you can position as an expert. And the more you are niching your business, the more you can easily position you as an expert. Imagine a community manager. If you are a community manager helping restaurant and if you are speaking fluently japanese and Korean, that's okay. You will attract the people who are only targeting chinese and korean market, for example. And who can say, today I can speak fluently korean and japanese, not a lot of people. So this is your core specialty. And go ahead and don't be afraid.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I like how you said it, like, as you get experience, you know you're going to build. I think you can't just like have a business idea and be like, okay, with my unique selling proposition. That's like what it's going to be forever. I like how you said you're going to continue to develop it and it's going to get better and better and better and more niche and niche as you discover yourself and the inner work of yourself, that whole transition. So I love that.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. And nothing is engraved in the marble. This is what we say. I don't know if you say that I love it. Nothing is engraved. And your niche will evolve with you, with your experience. And look at me. When I started I was working on marketing and communications topic for beginners, entrepreneurs. And following my gut and following my experience, I saw that I was more efficient in the luxury field. I was enjoying more working with spiritual entrepreneurs. And this is how you are building your niche. And you will never feel stupid in front of your own because you are changing your niche. If you explain super simply that yes, you evolved. And honestly, living one or two years as an entrepreneur is like maybe having ten years as an employee. So time is flying and things can change. And honestly, as a luxury brand, you absolutely do not care about what other people are thinking. This is your business. You are the leader and you are doing what you want in order to have the successful business you deserve. The fifth point is a work working on your offers. So what is important to check is what are your signature offers and your iconic creations. For example, if you are crafting products, you need to check if your offers are fitting with your positioning in terms of pricing and in terms of what people get at the end. If you have time to over deliver, to get a great onboarding, a great outboarding, if you are offering a great experience, if these offers are exclusive and rare, you really need to structure your offers. You need to think about everything. Because what is really important is that people who can afford luxury offers, they can afford everything and they can buy everything. When you are in the luxury field, it's like an unlimited field. The money is not the problem, but what people are really looking for. They are looking for simplicity. They are looking for.
They are looking for seamless experiences. They are looking for easy things. Things. Things need to be easy. If you think about a luxury hotel, the concierge at the entrance, they are saying yes to everything you want. Like eating caviar at 03:00 a.m. in the morning. But caviar from a specific place in Russia, they take an helicopter and they just get caviar for you. Because yes, and price is not a problem and the client asks for that. And if we want to satisfy the client, we just need to bring the cavity. Yeah. So yes, think about your offers as a part of your brand, because this is what people are looking for. They are not looking for a result. They are looking for the whole experience and the whole process. The process is also part of the experience. So anything needs to be seamless and really easy. This is what people are looking for. What is also important with offers is the way you are talking to people about the offers. Because we need to keep in mind that when people are buying luxury, they are not buying from a place of need, a place of fear. They are not buying with their pain points. When people are buying luxuries, they are buying from desire, from their dreams, from what they want to get. It's really not the same vibe. For example, if people are a virtual assistant, if you are positioned as a luxury brand, maybe today you can say, are you tired of working 80 hours per week, coming back home at night, seeing your kids because you missed bedtime? Again, click on this button and I will help you. This comes from a place of fear, a place of lack of time, for example. And you can turn on that and you can say, imagine spending that day with your kids at Disneyland, seeing their smile on their face, hearing their love into the roller coaster, getting out and discovering payment notifications on your smartphone while you were enjoying quality time family with your loved one. Your virtual assistant drove your business similar. You want to live that kind of day every day. Click on the button to make it happen.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Such a great example.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: It's exactly the pain point that your clients can have. And the second one are just showing the client that their dream can become true. And it's not the same vibe inside of you. When you are reading that, you know, this is not the same feeling and you are in the luxury field, you are buying. You are not buying and clicking and clicking on the button by saying, oh, my God, if I don't do that, maybe this will happen. You are buying because you are saying, oh, my God, I want this happen. So I'm gonna click there. So this is a really, totally different vibe. And you need to infuse that in your offers in order to show what kind of positioning you have.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: That's such a small shift. But, I mean, that's something I was excited for you to highlight, was, you know, what are the behaviors of a, someone who's looking for a luxury brand? Like, what are they actually looking for? Because they're totally different people than who you've been working with or from a different market who have a different perspective on money. And so I love how you explain just that perspective of what their action. They're looking. They have desire, not necessarily. They always have problems and they need solved. So I love that just slight shift that you can make in positioning. It's awesome.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Yeah. We need to keep in mind that there is a difference between I need a car and I want that car need a car to go to work. And if you want to get a car to go to work, maybe you.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Buy a Ford price shop for one. Yeah.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: And who today is saying, oh, my God, I am dreaming about having a Ford? No, but people are saying, oh, my God, I am dreaming of having an Aston Martin. So this is a really different point of view and we really need to keep that in mind. If you need a car, you get a Ford. If you want, if you desire, if you are dreaming about that car, you buy an Aston Martin, you get a Porsche, you get a Ferrari, you get a Lamborghini, whatever. And it's not just the same market, it's not just the same vocabulary, it's not just the same feeling when you go and buy it. Then if you want to be a luxury brand, you need to keep that in mind. Do not talk to people from a place of need, because people don't buy luxury from a place of need. You don't need an Hermes bag, you're dreaming about it. But if you need a handbag, you go to Zara or anything.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think this is such a really great point about how you speak and present yourself. I mean, when you go back to the beginning of the steps you were talking about, which was, you know, how are people perceiving my brand? That all goes back to this again, of just like, how are people seeing you? Are they seeing someone who's desperate to get clients as someone who's just talking about pain and pain and pain, or someone that's helping them dream and like, contributing to that dream and helping their dream come true? I mean, I can feel that difference when you're explaining those examples of how different those two are. So I think that's one of the biggest lessons from this whole thing, is just how do they behave? What are they thinking? Because they're totally different people. I mean, their desires for your service are totally different from the need. Right? I love that. The need and the want.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: And again, it's not the bad solution against the good one. And usually low cost and mainstream brands are using this kind of speech, like talking about pain points instead of talking about dreams and everything. And that's okay. It's not about good or bad, is just what do you want to choose for your brand and what is your positioning and how do you position your speech from that? And it's totally okay to push on pain points, especially if you are doing lower price, but if you are doing luxury brand, people are buying with their emotions. They want to project themselves, they want to envision their biggest dreams and that's it. This is what luxury brands are doing. And the six ones, the last point is branding. So this is what I love. This is my specialty and this must be the final step. This is the achievement of all the previous work that you made. And this is why I feel crazy when I see people coming to me and telling me, well, I need my visual identity without having thinking about their mission, their vision, their value, their offers, their pricing and everything. It drives me crazy. So honestly, branding is like the topping of the cake. It's really the last thing that you do, because how can you create the visual identity of your brand if you didn't think about what you want to inspire, what you want to create about emotions and everything? It's really difficult to me. So this is why we are doing all these steps with my client in this order. And branding is really the place where you create emotions to your audience. People buy with their emotions in luxury brands, they do not buy with their rational brand. So this is really important to work on that. Branding is also where you will translate your brand into the matter. You will create something tangible about your brand and this is also where you will start building the trust. This is how you create a trustable brand, by working on that. So to me, usually I start with my client by asking them two huge and big and deep questions. The first one is, if you were about to launch a branding party in order to present your brand to the world, to your coworkers, to your contractors, to your partners, to your.
What kind of bread party would you have? So do this party take place on the beach, in New York loft, in a parisian apartment? What kind of food will you have on that brand party? Will you have finger food, molecular food made by a chef live? What kind of music? Deep. And you go deep and asking these questions, you will have your brand vibe, you know, because honestly, having a beach party, like with fires and marshmallow is not. Is that not the same that having a super edgy party in an old industry with graffiti and performers and everything? So work on that, go really deep and then do your brand's chinese portrait. If my brand were a food, it would be chocolate, popcorn, sausage, burger, anything. If my brand was an actress or an actor or a celebrity. If you think about Catwin and maybe Jennifer Aniston, this is absolutely not the same vibe. If my brand was a plant, if my brand was, I don't know, maybe a city. Yeah, you need to go really, really deep. Ask like maybe a hundred questions in order to get the vibe of your brand, then we are working on their tone of voice. So what kind of tone the brands, the brand will have, what kind of vocabulary the brand will use. Is there forbidden words? Do the brand use slang? A formal tone, relaxed tone of voice? This is really important to define everything because when you are working with contractors, with employees, everything needs to be really structured in order to make people speak in the same way. Then you can also work on your brand score expression. Is there any allowed or forbidden topics? What will your brand talk about? This is really the work of people who are working on your social media, for example. You will structure their work. This will also help you to make collaboration. If for example, you are a coach and you don't want to talk about sexuality, you will maybe not make partnership with a love coach or some kind of professional like this. So this also will help you structure your business. And then only after that you are working on your brand identity. So you are starting with your video visual identity. So the fonts, the color palette, the graphic design, the logo and everything, they're really classical visual identity. And then you can also go deeper and create a multi sensory brand identity by working on your brand's taste, on your brand's musicality, on your brand's touch fragrance, and developing, for example, a specific fragrance for your brand, developing a specific taste. And this is absolutely unlimited. And this is why I love so much my work.
[00:44:25] Speaker B: I love, I mean, your passion just flows through when you speak about it. But I mean, what such good questions and ways to think of your brand. Like, I, there's lots of things you said that I never even thought of how to think of my own brand. The questions you asked of just so detailed and so like expansive on all the little things that we can think about to show off our brand. And I love how all the thing we just talked about in this podcast, all that work to build up to the visual. And I think a lot of people work on the visual first and just think the visual will do the work for me. But really there's, I mean, what you explained, there's so much work behind the visual, for the visual to work. It can't just be visual and it can't just be the other, right? They have to work together. And the pre work really builds the visual, the taste, the smell, all those amazing things that the details of the brand that make a huge difference. I love that.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And honestly, I think that this is why people are usually bored by their visual identity. And this is why people, people are working on their logo and their brand identity, like every two years, because at first they are not going deeper enough or they want a visual identity too quickly. And you know, this is also why I usually work with experienced entrepreneurs with years of experience in business. It's because working on your branding in general and with me as I have luxury standards because of my position, it's an investment. When some people are coming to me and saying, oh, I just launched my business and I would be really happy to work with you. I ask some questions because my goal is not to make people pay and be disappointed because their business changed like the two first years of business. Everything is changing so fast. Maybe you can change your target, you can change your whole activity, maybe you can change your market, you can change everything. So usually what I tell people is, okay, if you're not sure that in two years you will do the same activity. If you're not sure of that, wait two years and come back to me in two years in order to invest. Because you will be sure at that moment that where you at is the great place for you and the right moment for you. And I'm really exhausted when I see so many people saying to young entrepreneurs and beginners, oh, you absolutely need a logo and a full branding. No, I'm sorry, I absolutely do not agree with that. You don't need a name. You don't need a full branding, the whole package, because your business will change so fast that maybe you will spend your money and regret it in few months. Instead of that, make it super simple. You already have a name. Your name is already a brand name. So don't spend two weeks searching an original name or something funny or anything. Use your name. Go on, canva, don't waste your money. Go on, canva. Find like two beautiful and elegant fonts, like a short color palette. Create something really simple, elegant, the less is the better. And wait and put money aside until the moment you are sure that, okay, you are in the right place, you have the right clients and everything. You are ready to go deeper and to do this work. Because if, if you don't, in my opinion, in two years, you will pay again for another brand, for visual identity because you will not go deeper enough.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: And you'll want someone to take you through that process. I mean, I've gone through that process with a web designer, brand designer, and you'll want someone who's really like expert, expert, like Amandine to like take you through that process because you need someone to help you go deeper when it comes to your visual branding and even, even deeper than that. And so I love that advice. I totally agree with that. Think the first few years be simple, you know, just get yourself out there. But then, yeah, when you feel sure. I love that. So. Well, thank you, Amandine, for coming on. I mean, there is just. I'm just amazed by you and so inspired by all you had to share. This was just so helpful. I know for so many people who want to get on this path of luxury and to become luxury right now if they're ready. But thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise. We're going to find you and connect with you.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: You can connect with me on Instagram. So at next branding. So next is written nxt. You can find me on my website, next dash branding.com, and you can find me on my podcast. But if you go on my instagram, you have the link in bio and everything is linked to my website, too. So just find me and join me on Instagram and send me a DM. I would. I would be more than happy to chat with you.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, listen to our podcast. There's so many more juicy things she digs deeper in. Well, thank you, Manny, for coming on with us. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
