Premium's on Fleek...

The word ‘Premiumisation’, is everywhere.

Recently LSN published a trend on Accessible Premium. 1 HQ presented at the Museum of Brands on The New Premium: Reinvented and Recoded. Premium has proliferated into the mass premium, super- premium, hyper-premium, accessible premium and 'premium on fleek'. Okay, so I made the last one up... But you get the gist.

It is estimated that the industry of premium is worth well, a lot of money.

A 2016 Nielsen Global Premiumisation report entitled "Moving on Up" found that Premium Products “which Nielsen defines as goods that cost at least 20% more than the average price for the category” is experiencing strong growth that is outpacing the category average, driven by increasing mass affluence and an emerging middle class. They report:

“In the U.S. premium products account for roughly one-quarter of dollar sales in the personal- and home-care categories (26% and 23%, respectively), growth in the preium segment outpaced total category growth for personal care (8% versus 2%) and food (8% versus 3%) in the year ended April 2, 2016. The story is similar in several European markets.”

The last 4 semiotics projects I have worked on have had a premium angle. One was about understand how to square premium with a sense of value. In the others premium feels like it has become a hygiene factor or mandatory for marketeers to build into their products and brands.

Scott Galloway writes about Apple in his fascinating book The Four, their stranglehold on the smartphone and personal computing market has resulted in other machines looking ‘uncool’. The brands in their wake need to exceed to a certain threshold of premium design respectability for their product superiority to even count.

The quest for premiumness therefore seems to have flipped some time in the last few years from a desire to maximise added value and to stand out to a need to satisfice to fit into the pack just to be taken seriously, or just not seen as budget. This arms race of premium is taking place everywhere from FMCG to automotive. In semiotic terms, the accelerating of design cues and brand narratives is like any speculative economy; the sign inflation leads to a bubble – as the promise of brand value becomes increasingly unmoored from the delivery.

Premium is a hard word to define. On my Brands and Meaning course at Warwick University – I tend to define premium in contradiction to luxury. And this is consistent with the semiotic methodology where meaning is seen as relational, (black is NOT white, clean is NOT dirty). I often use as examples, the two famous London department stores of Selfridges and Harrods, predicated partly on brand identity (yellow and black, versus green and gold), spatial, architectural semiotics (Selfridges as a gallery, Harrods as a museum) as well as the branding and user imagery (Selfridges, young and hip and constantly refreshing store displays with contemporary art and cultural input), Harrods more classic and traditional. So if premium is about quality, luxury is about excess. If premium about a contemporaneity, luxury is about a timelessness and luxury is always about a provenance often built on a founder’s ethos. This is perhaps why very expensive vodkas (because associated with contemporary design, mixology and club culture),are still called super-premium, whilst expensive cognacs are called luxury.

But things have become even more confusing of late, because with premium brands creeping upwards in their quality credentials. Luxury brands have had to emphasize their craft and unique aura so luxury is fragmenting into a less monolithic, more fissiparous entity, luxury brands when they are not hunkering down and doubling down on artisanal purity (Hermes), they are starting to act more like 'super premium' brands in terms of now emphasizing innovation (Louis Vuitton) in their tie up with Supreme – luxury houses have moved to tie up with artists. See Jeff Koons and Gucci and before him LV and Takeshi Murakami - getting into bed with kitsch, no less! And as Jean-Noel Kampferer writes in his paper on Luxury “The challenges of luxury branding” luxury is itself becoming an overused word that is incredibly subjective and fungible depending on the cultural context. And this is the eternal dilemma; (not that of Prada, Cristal or Burberry trying to curb an unaspirational user imagery) but squaring the need to maintain a charismatic aura with a need for cultural currency. He writes:

“Can the cornerstone luxury value of rarity reconcile with Wall Street demands for constantly more growth from luxury companies (Kapferer, 2015)? Is rarity still part of the essence of luxury today or just a communication signal, illustrated by a few exceptional products, while most profitability comes from mass products?”

Is premium due in the next few years to encounter a parallel quandary once sign inflation has led to the bursting of an unsustainable bubble? Or will ‘masstige’ just crawl out the woodwork?

Premium can be a very superficial semiotic proposition – the use of silver and black background, to connote technological precision, or using historicist patterning to connote design literacy.

But I think there is another way of looking at it. In terms of packaging, certainly, but also when it comes to brand imagery, I have consistently seen premiumness as having three dimensions.

BRAND INNOVATION (added value benefits, new features, improved technology)

BRAND EXPERIENCE (stimulating or sensorial product or service design experience)

BRAND PERSONALITY (more communication via purpose, brand story or aesthetics)

I recently saw an ad I wanted to profile, as doing an uncommonly good job speaking about premium and creating a balance in the brand communication.

Often you get brands in their silos communicating on one thing, so a Virgin Media conveying experience through motion graphics, and colour and swagger. Or a brand focusing on brand innovation in a very po faced, cold and clinical way, think of a Jawbone or the like. And then a welter of brands (often in the FMCG space) who do character (Oatly springs to mind), but fail to necessarily persuade on innovation. Every so often you see an add that does that innovation in a way that also exudes character. Step in Simba Sleep with this great ad.

On the website they have a more conventional demo dissecting the multiple layers of the bed and rhapsodising on hypoallergenic layers, the Simbatex and Visco Memory foam and Conical Springs that remember your body.

But in the TV ad, here, they take a different tack. And rather than just a bald statement of product specification and usage tie it into an emotional benefit that is surprising and cheeky and that spoofs a boring product demo.

The Innovation credentials are of course there in the sense of investing in the robotic testers and the layering– but the rational persuasion model has, as we know been given somewhat of a kicking recently by behavioural sciences. So Simba ladder up to the higher order values of what we do in bed and wanting a brand that designs out mattresses with sleep, not just repose, in mind. Well we, er roll around and er, sometimes have sex. There is something charming and ingenious about the quasi Heath Robinson like contraptions, mimicking human body positions and movements and the the idea of employing robots to suggest sexual activity was genius and topical. Then we also have the advantage of a company with an obsessive mission - the tonality reminded me a bit of the VW Passat 'Built on Obsession' ads from the 1990s having a singular vision and doing one thing well. That is common to Harry’s Razors etc and this exclusive focus always tends to reinforce perceived premium credentials.

I thought it was a masterclass.

And therein ends my homily on premiumness... Right... now what's 'on fleek'?

Chris Arning runs Creative Semiotics - a boutique creative strategy consultancy based in London, but operating internationally. He specialises in semiotics and related methodologies for insight and strategy.

www.creativesemiotics.co.uk