“Premium” Doesn’t Have to Mean Boring

Johnnie Campbell
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read
British Airways safety video 2017

Every so often when entering the creative process with a client, I am told that a brand has a certain ‘premiumness’ that I need to be aware of.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for brand positioning, and specifically the need for consistency. However, what I have always genuinely struggled with is what ‘premium’ actually means.

Let’s say we’re talking to an airline about a project aiming to show product differentiation. We want to see why their luxury offering is different from another airline’s product, in an increasingly crowded market.

Perhaps we’d be primarily targeting higher net-worth individuals who can afford to travel first or business class, as well as aspirational travellers who dream that they too will travel in such luxury in the future.

Research would tell us that these two groups of people have different motivations, interests and purchase habits. Therefore we need a communication that doesn’t alienate our higher net-worth individuals, whilst exciting our ‘aspirationals’. Underpinning the whole thing though, we need to stay ‘premium’.

Annnnd this what you end up with:

I would lay no blame on the agency or production company for producing this. The work does show the airline’s luxury product, and the execution is accomplished and ‘premium’ (even with some fairly noticeable CGI in the opening 5 seconds).

I wouldn’t blame the client either. They have done their part by ensuring their product is front and centre, placed within the ‘story’ and stands up to the quality of their competitive set.

Instead I blame us. I mean ‘the industry’ as a whole, for perpetuating the use of the word premium as freely and openly as we do. The result of which, I believe, has led to ‘premium’ becoming a misnomer for high quality work, and more often a synonym for beige.

Overall though, what this work really lacks is difference. Assuming for a second that this brief did ask for differentiation, would you be able to tell it apart from any other luxury airline?

In my mind at least, we aren’t doing our jobs when we comfort our clients by telling them our creative is ‘on brand’ and ‘premium’. When really we mean it is risk-averse, or at worst, totally devoid of concept.

This goes way beyond just the aviation and wider travel industry too. Most ‘luxury’ products and services that I have had experience with have faced similar problems.

In stark contrast, I recently came across a product launch video for Acne Studios’ new line of trainers for A/W 17:

On the face of it, the video seems unremarkable. This is a product video after all, and for the first ‘golden’ 15 seconds of the video all we see is a fairly straight-up visual of Acne’s new product.

Then things start to get interesting. Slowly but surely, they destroy the product. It melts away into the urban concrete cross-section, and by the minute mark of the video, all we’re left with is a messy concrete-based birthday cake of colour and texture.

And it’s beautiful, and interesting. It’s captivating in it’s execution, and genius in its simplicity. Most importantly though, it’s ‘premium’.

I’m not saying we should see more melting planes. I’m not sure that’d go down so well. However, the essence of both product films are the same. It’s just that one comes from an industry where we expect differentiation and creativity, and the other comes from an industry obsessed with ‘premiumness’.

Acne may well be targeting a certain type of well-off person with their communications. A fashion-conscious person with a higher than average disposable income, but perhaps not your stereotypical rich person. However, Acne’s trainers start at around £300, so they’re certainly in the same price bracket as more traditional luxury brands such as Balenciaga, Céline, Chanel and Gucci.

That lead me to think; does this pen portrait of a traditional rich person actually manifest itself in the real world? Or at the very least is this stereotype a dying breed from a bygone era?

Rich people are people nonetheless. Even if they do occasionally get duped into attending disastrous rich-people festivals in the Bahamas every so often.

They may have different purchase behaviours, and different motivations, but once a person reaches a certain income level, it doesn’t mean they suddenly lose a sense of humour, or an appreciation of art, culture or even weirdness.

The fashion industry knows this. To a certain extent the automotive industry knows this. The art industry is built on this. So why haven’t other industries cottoned on?

With a few pleasant exceptions, I believe the aviation industry is one of the main perpetrators of ‘premiumisation’. I’d really love to see more airlines shaking up the status quo (like British Airways), especially as price aggregators continue to disrupt the market.

In any case, it doesn’t seem to be the super-rich that make the real difference in aviation anyway:

Maybe it’s time we focused on the ‘aspirationals’?

JC

Johnnie Campbell

Co-Founder at Villager | Branded Entertainment & Film Production | London

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