I had the opportunity to speak to three markers who work for genuine luxury brands - not merely the brands that want to pose as luxury but are affordable to the middle classes, but those products whose price is well beyond the means of anyone whose economic class doesn't end in "illionaire." All of them openly admitted to sending out marketing messages to people who could not afford their products, and doing so intentionally. And it makes a great deal of sense.
Esteem as a Benefit
There are two reasons that consumers purchase a specific brand (or even a specific product): practical benefits and psychological benefits, the most significant of which is esteem. Often, people are motivated by a combination of the two, but sometimes one takes precedence over the other.
The consumer who seeks practical benefits needs a product to accomplish a task or convey an experience. To this customer, a car is "basic transportation" - although their desire for certain qualities (smoothness or ride, fuel efficiency, etc.) also falls into the category of practical, although they are not strictly necessary to the functional benefit. This customer may seek quality, but the quality is for their own experience - it is something that exists between themselves and the product they use.
The customer who seeks psychological benefits is indifferent to whether the product actually does anything practical. They wish to own a product because it makes them "feel" a certain way about themselves - and because extraverted personalities take their emotional cues from others, they can only feel a certain way about themselves when others express or validate certain complimentary emotions. In terms of esteem, am extraverted person can only feel he is important if he notices others expressing admiration or envy toward him.
This quality is not unique to luxury products, as there are many cheap products that cause a person to experience self-esteem. Indeed, many people seem to take a certain satisfaction in paying very little, and brag to others about how cheaply they obtained things, with the desire to have others admire or envy them for their thrift. With very few exceptions, luxury brands play on the same psychological tendencies, but in the opposite way: they wish to demonstrate their wealth (or pretend to have wealth) by owning very expensive things, to be admired or envied by others.
The psychological benefit of a product only occurs if people recognize it. Therefore in order to be admired for owning an ecologically-friendly vehicle, people who do not wish to purchase one must recognize what the brand means so that they can deliver the admiration or envy that owners crave. If they did not, then conspicuously consuming the product would not deliver that psychological benefit. Likewise, if the ownership of a luxury brand is to confer any esteem on the owner, those who cannot afford the item must recognize it as being beyond their means in order to feel admiration or envy toward those who can afford it.
Therefore, it is important to the establishment of prestige to make the general public, not just prospective buyers, aware of the qualities of the product that they will likely never own. And this is the main reason that luxury brands advertise in a seemingly indiscriminate manner: to those they know cannot afford the product, their message is "you cannot have this, and must envy those who do." Without that, the benefit of esteem cannot be delivered by product ownership.
Self-Esteem as a Benefit
While the extraverted personality craves the admiration and envy of others, the introverted person is largely indifferent to the reaction of others and his feelings of self-worth come from within. But even self-esteem must be based on something, and the introverted person must be taught what will grant him self-esteem. For this reason, luxury advertising is not lost of the introverted customer, but functions in a different way.
In terms of esteem, it would be accurate to state that the introverted person admires and envies his future self - the future self who has achieved the goals to which the present self has not yet achieved. In this way, luxury advertising teaches the consumer what he ought to want, and what he ought to be fulfilled by achieving, by showing him the goal or reward of behavior he has not yet undertaken. In that way, luxury product is a way for the customer to reward himself for success - without being prompted, he may not know precisely how to do so.
The distinction may be difficult to assess from an external perspective: when we are aware that a person possesses a luxury product, our assumption about his motivation is inaccurate (and is often reflective of what are or would be our own motivation to engage in the same behavior). Given the predilection for absolutes, we like to declare that all people who do a certain thing do so for the exact same reason, and fail to recognize that their actual motivation may be different to our assumption.
The only instance in which it can be confidently declared that a person is motivated by self-esteem rather than esteem is when they are discreet in their use of luxury products - but because they are discreet, it is difficult to observe. The discreet consumer removes the tags and labels of luxury items, or purchases items whose marks of brand identity are subtle enough that they will be unnoticed.
As such, the advertisers of luxury products must be discreet in appealing to the introverted customer for whom luxury is personal:: make too big a splash, and luxury seems vulgar and ostentatious, done for the sake of impressing others rather than rewarding oneself. In these instances, the original assumption that any non-qualified audience is accidental is partially correct - only insofar as the advertiser sends a message to those who may be able to afford their product in the future, but cannot presently. If they were more capable of predicting which persons might have greater wealth in future, they could more precisely target their advertising.
Fiscal Irresponsibility
Thus far, I have considered the idea that advertisers seek to promote envy of their products, or more accurately they promote admiration and envy of the people who are able to afford them on the part of the people who are not. What remains is the notion of encouraging fiscal responsibility.
It can be argued that by causing people who cannot afford a product to envy those who possess it will in some instances cause them to purchase things they cannot afford, to the detriment of their other needs. It is very much like addiction, in that an addict will neglect every other responsibility in order to feed their addiction. And it is also very much like addiction in that it is atypical behavior: not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, and not everyone who envies luxury spends irresponsible to obtain things they cannot afford.
"We don't want poor people using our brand," one marketer told me. "We would end up like Mercedes." Which is to say that when a luxury brand loses its esteem when is conspicuously consumed by too many of the wrong kind of people. It may still fall into the "premium" category of brands, but it is no longer a luxury item and is no longer capable of drawing attention or inspiring admiration or envy.
Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided: a manufacturer cannot (legally) refuse to sell its product to anyone who can afford it. And they are unaware of whether a customer has the funds to purchase their product because he is wealthy, or simply because he has scraped together the means to purchase by neglecting other responsibilities.
It is also difficult, if not impossible, to make a non-qualified individual aware of a luxury brand so that he may give esteem to those who can afford it (or can consider it to be something he can obtain to reward himself for his own success) without also causing some of them to seek to pacify their envy or satisfy their own craving for esteem by purchasing things they cannot afford. It is not an intentional effect of luxury marketing, but an unavoidable side effect.
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The question as to whether it is "right" to sell envy is a moral consideration rather than a practical one, so I don't intended to explore it fully here. I'm generally satisfied to accept that envy is something a person can choose to feel, and can choose not to feel. If it weren't for luxury advertising, those who are prone to envy would find something else to covet.
And the question of whether luxury brands are to blame for the fiscal irresponsibility of others is likewise a moral consideration. And again, I tend to accept that it is more a matter of personal morality: advertisers don't "make" people purchase things they cannot afford simply by promoting them to those who can. If this were intentional, it would certainly be entirely immoral.
But the core accusation, that luxury advertising sells envy, is entirely true and entirely intentional - of that there can be little argument.
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