Daniel Langer featured in Forbes with insights on digital luxury experience creation in 2021
As 2021 dawns, the effects of the 2020 global Covid-19 pandemic will bring profound and lasting changes to the luxury market and present a whole new set of challenges for luxury brands. Unprecedented may be an overused term, but it is the only word to describe 2021 after the troubles of 2020.
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Digital technology has to bridge the gap with the human side of luxury. “There are certain limits as to how you can bring brand equity across digitally,” says Daniel Langer, CEO of brand strategy firm Équité and professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University.
“We have to acknowledge these limitations and work around them. The sensual touch, feel and in the case of perfume, the scent, are missing. If we cannot let people smell, for example, then we have to find out what else we can do. How else we can tell the story of the brand because people aren’t necessarily buying the fragrance only because of the scent. They are also buying the fragrance because of the brand, its brand equity and how you tell the story of your brand,” he continues.
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Luxury goods brands that have continued to bolster their value proposition and connect with their prime customers will come back stronger, maybe not in 2021 but 2022 and after. Équité’s Daniel Langer advises luxury brands to “build the strongest possible brand equity, create the strongest possible value for customers, and connect as much as possible with them.”
He adds, “Maybe they will not buy your brand on day one, but they will not forget if you do something for them now. If there’s no memory, there’s no loyalty.”
Once luxury consumers emerge, they will dig deeper into the meaning and purpose of brands that they choose to connect with, looking for brand values that match their own.
It means more than just brands taking a stand on the environment, sustainability and socially-responsible business practices, along with support of cultural values like gender, race, sexual orientation and income equality.
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