In this hectic buy-buy sell-sell season one producer rises above the noise and there may be some borrowable insights from taking a look. I propose Hermès, a ‘producer’ who’s definitively mastered the art of the luxury ‘game.’
Back in 2009 I enjoyed Michael Tonnello’s book Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag. It was his story of globe-trotting in search of buying Birkin purses and his adventures along the way. Fast forward to a recent 60 Minutes profile of Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Hermes’ artistic director. The segment was a great behind the scenes look inside the atelier as well as inside how the brand presents itself. There were two comments with some relevance to wine marketing. These come up at 3:04 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah2eAynWzEg
One was when the interviewer, Sharyn Alfonsi, asked: “Do you ever make a decision based on cost? Budget? Like, “This will be less expensive if we do it this way.” M. Dumas answered: “I can’t work like that. I’ve always heard that Hermès is very costly. It’s not expensive. It’s costly.”
Alfonsi asked; “What’s the difference?” Dumas answered: “The cost is the actual price of making an object properly with the required level of attention so that you have an object of quality. Expensive is a product, which is not delivering what it’s supposed to deliver, but you’ve paid quite a large amount of money for it, and then it betrays you. That’s expensive.”
Comment #2: “The company has never had a marketing department. Its allure comes from a century of superb craftsmanship and serendipity. Take this trapezoid shaped purse. In 1935, Dumas’ grandfather designed the bag; it wasn’t a hit. But as legend has it, 20 years later, an expecting Grace Kelly used the bag to hide her belly from peering paparazzi. Soon women flooded Hermès, asking for what was eventually renamed the Kelly bag. Hermès scarves have been favored by American royalty and actual royalty for decades. The kind of product placement money can’t buy. Even the brand’s famous citrus-colored boxes, a color the company trademarked in the U.S., was a happy accident of the 1940s.”
Costly vs. expensive. In the eyes (or should we say palate) of the customer? When you consider the landscape of wine bottles and the pricing that often doesn’t seem to make sense, this explanation of ‘costly’ vs. ‘expensive,’ and the idea that you’ve been betrayed by buying something very costly….hits home.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a bit like me, sussing out the ‘marketing’ in the most mundane situations. When a product—dare we say ‘empire’—like Hermès, proclaims that they essentially don’t market, I’m even more intrigued.
Fourteen million people follow their Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hermes/.
Someone had fun making a video of a dog on the loose after hours in an Hermès shop (“Who let the dog out?): https://www.instagram.com/p/DDzmC6xssJR/ . A gifted animator created a clever cartoonish rendering of an apple transforming into a purse: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDt1UclszQF/ .
I admire the company’s huge footprints in the world of horses and equestrian competition, of course tracing right back to their origin as a saddlemaker. You can experience an ASMR-ish sound-bath horse grooming session on their IG https://www.instagram.com/p/DCRm0urMZma/ or appreciate the pure art behind this horse’s fall foliage attire https://www.instagram.com/p/DAsm-0pMUpC/
Or yet another huge endeavor, a YouTube channel documenting all of their equestrian involvement, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1G-Fq3N1R8YhTDTfJYoSOcGURV6n3BV.
You’ll visit with the riders Hermès supports, who talk about going faster, ‘daring to be generous,’ riding bareback, learning from defeat and so on; there are also segments with saddle makers and other craftspeople.
So after a glimpse into the Hermès mindset, what do we bring back to our desks? Take a look at your craftsmanship; is it top shelf? Do you employ practices and specialized equipment that you should be talking about more? What about your grapes and your vineyards—they must be unique—are you detailing that with accuracy as a point of difference to attract customers?
Are you branching out to support some type of field or endeavor with a thematic link to your name or identity?
And how do you walk the walk of being exclusive but not too exclusive? How easy or hard is it for a new customer to buy your wine? Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen’s recent Robb Report piece about the allocation system is a great read on this aspect: https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/against-winery-allocation-system-1236110110/
Food for thought in the New Year.
Happy holidays!