Creative agencies are commonly associated with the visual design of luxury brands, but many brands miss out on the other benefits creative agencies can provide with respect to brand launches and brand evolution.

Throughout this article, we will explore three ways creative agencies can help luxury brands thrive in any market.

Design

For a lot of businesses targeting the luxury market, creative agencies are considered specialists in design. Though creative brands are specialists in visual design, they can also add significant value in other ways. 

Getting to Know The Brand

With a deep understanding of the psychology of luxury, creative agencies are masters at getting to know a brand, getting a sense of the brand’s values, the products and services being offered, and the feeling they are wanting customers to experience with their brand.

Creating Brand Assets

With their deep understanding of the business, and brand ambitions, creative agencies then translate that into creative assets.

Creative assets for a luxury brand are more than a logo. A logo is a very small, but significant, part of an overall asset collection that a brand should have at its disposal.

Creative assets include, but are not limited to logos, color schemes, fonts, images, illustrations, and more. 

All of these assets then need to be customized for different customer acquisition channels, and for customers at different stages of the brand awareness journey, which takes much more expertise and planning than is often understood.

Launch

Following the design phase, many luxury brands then expect that their creative agency is no longer of value to their brand launch, but this is far from the truth. 

A luxury creative agency can add significant value, even once the design phase of a luxury brand has been completed.

Critically Defined Objectives

A lot of branding campaigns fall into the trap of not having clearly defined objectives. 

Before the launch of a luxury brand, there need to be some clear objectives. 

For each brand, the objectives are going to be different, but they will typically involve settling on some expectations in the form of desired market penetration and market reputation.

When you launch a brand you need some agreed-upon aims for the level to which your target market will be aware of you.

Keep in mind that when launching a luxury brand, the time scale with which you work is typically much longer than with conventional brands.

Some luxury brands. such as Mercedes. have a clearly articulated plan to start exposing infants to their brand and then nurture that awareness throughout their life until they are at a point to consider purchasing a luxury vehicle at a much later time.

A new luxury brand may not be able to plan for that extended time horizon, but will typically need to think in years, not months.

In addition to brand penetration, it is also important to clearly define some reputation goals for a luxury brand launch. There is no point in being known by your target market if they have developed a negative perception of your brand, or even worse, have developed an incorrect perception of your brand and associate you with another product or service category entirely. 

From the outset, ensure you have agreed on a way to determine whether your brand is meeting goals regarding awareness and perception.

Choosing The Right Channels For the Target Audience

When launching a luxury brand it is imperative to know where your target customers are, and how to get in front of them.

Are they offline or online? Are they on Twitter, Facebook, or Tik Tok? Is it a professional audience or other? 

It doesn’t matter where your audience is, just that you know where they are, so you can go and meet them there.

A creative agency is an asset throughout this process.

Evolution

Once your brand has been designed and launched, a new phase in your branding journey begins.

From here, the focus of a creative agency shifts.

At this point, you enter an ongoing process of continuous improvement.

From a branding point of view you need to be consistently measuring the extent to which your brand is being recognized, the way in which it is being perceived, and how that awareness is translating to the core business goals.

A creative agency can work with you to measure these things and adapt over time.

There will never be a point at which your branding and marketing campaigns are perfect. If they are performing well, you will celebrate and try and make them perform better. If they are not performing well, you will need to think about how to make improvements.

The evolution of a luxury brand can be in the branding itself, but in many cases, the work is done at the campaign level.

It could involve getting new brand assets created, trying brand assets on other platforms, and trying other digital agencies to implement on those platforms.

The process of continuous evaluation and improvement is very nuanced and is most effective with an impartial third party. Though creative agencies aren’t typically considered in this light, it is an area they can add significant value.

Creative agencies do have a reputation for being design specialists, and they are.

However they can also continue to offer significant value to a luxury brand, and increase its chance of success following the design and launch phases.