Four Ways Your Brand Can Thrive

Here are four solutions participants came up with:

1. Partner with another brand. Luxury watchmaker Breitling recently entered into a co-branding pact with luxury carmaker Bentley, creating a clock for a new Bentley vehicle as well as sponsoring the carmaker's racing team. The partnership has a certain logic: Both fine cars and fine watches are synonymous with prestige, tradition, and technical innovation.

2. Build a product to fit a price point. In Tiffany's, you can buy a $60 pen or a $10,000 necklace, and both carry the prestige of being from Tiffany's. Such price diversification allows a retailer to keep attracting consumers despite sharp fluctuations in discretionary incomes.

3. Segment your brands. Make "good," "better," and "best" categories of products available. Introduce shoppers to your brand with a "good" category, and as their income grows, they can step up to more prestigious—and expensive—models. Mercedes, for example, accommodates young luxury seekers with the C-Class line. Later, they can reward their success by stepping up to an E-Class vehicle. Finally, when they've attained executive status, they can buy an S-Class model.

4. Diversify your brand into complementary products. For example, Bulgari, originally the Bulgaris family of Greek silversmiths, evolved into an internationally known brand and retailer of gold and jeweled pieces. But in the 1990s, it expanded into fragrances, silk scarves, leather bags, eyewear, and table and giftware to expand the Bulgari experience for consumers not always in the market for jewelry.
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