Marketing luxury goods has never been easy. People who buy very expensive items often like to feel they are part of an exclusive club and may find advertising and some of the more common methods used to get the attention of customers a bit crass. Billboards, blimps, sandwich boards and giveaways may turn off the buyers of diamond-encrusted watches and thousand-dollar handbags.
In China, luxury marketing is particularly complex. As in other places, the wealthy want to feel elite, especially when they are parting with large sums of money. But at the same time, China is a new market and many people in the country may not be familiar with brands well known in the West. Pitching to them and pitching hard is often a necessity, despite the desire of most luxury retailers to maintain a sophisticated image.
"The major difference between China and the rest of the world is that you have to create the market here. But nobody wants to compromise their brand. Nobody wants to push too fast. We want to remain selective," says Pierre Denis, regional MD for Christian Dior. "You need a balanced push. You want to develop the brand without hurting it."
Getting the mix right has never been so important. China is now a major growth market for luxury brands. Companies facing slow growth in the rest of the world need to sell in China.
Yet, some luxury retailers have chosen to remain decidedly low-key in their approach to the market. "We don't advertise and we don't plan to," says Alan Hepburn, MD of Three on the Bund, a high-end retail establishment in Shanghai. "Word-of-mouth and print coverage are more powerful."
Hepburn's company has been very active in this regard, aggressively courting the press and seeking publicity. But it chooses not to buy advertising and instead relies on the buzz it and its tenants create.
Others, like French watchmaker Cartier, have found that the lack of knowledge in China about brands is a problem. While the Chinese are very fast to take to luxury products, they still have trouble differentiating within the sector and distinguishing between the various strata of the luxury market. "You are starting from zero here," says Dimitri Kaczorowski, general manager at Cartier China. He adds that many companies expect their reputations to carry them, only to find that they are virtually unknown in China.
They have to make the effort and build a name.
"A lot of people come here and think it will be okay because they are so-and-so," says Kaczorowski.
Another problem is the size of the country. While a marketing effort in one city may yield results there, it will have little to no impact elsewhere.
Many cities outside of the main commercial and political centres may have potential customers - there are rich Chinese everywhere - but getting to them means doing something that they can see directly.
This has led some high-end brands such as Cartier to break with their standard practices and advertise their wares, or promote their products more aggressively than they would overseas. Cartier has not only gone to print, but also to television. While it recognises that most of the viewers will not buy their products, it's the best choice for developing a national market in such a large and diverse country.
"To achieve much, it costs a bundle," says Kaczorowski. "It takes a lot of cash and a lot of energy."
A lot of brands, he says, were putting ads in what they felt were the right magazines - names well known internationally - only to find the message all but lost. Chinese newsstands are so packed and the magazines are so stuffed with ads that most readers barely notice a luxury newcomer.
Dior is advertising in print and, in the case of its cosmetics, on television.
While this is in line with its international marketing strategy, and it says it is making no great changes in its strategy for China, it recognises the need to actively promote itself to get anywhere in the country.
"Word of mouth would take for ever," Denis says.