Our research shows the vast majority (over 80%) of today's wealthy are self-made. Most of the analysis of this group focuses (perhaps, fixates) on the "wealth" aspect of their accomplishment: How they made and how they spend their money.
I am also intrigued by the aspect of being "self-made." I believe this perspective has significant marketing implications.
Any discussion of "self-made" benefits from an historical perspective. At a minimum, it requires appreciation of the history ("life story") of the individual and his/her accomplishment. One can look at individual's progress from the outside, at the sequence of events leading to the financial success. This is the MBA version. It provides a case history of what to do to become wealthy. It doesn't provide insight into being comfortable with the success ("Be careful what you wish for.").
Most of the newly wealthy, coming from middle class backgrounds, are self-conscious about how to think and behave in their new circumstances. Why?
Being "self-made" is a relatively new (historically speaking) human phenomenon. A reading of Fernand Braudel reveals the recency of significant upward mobility in Western society. (One never rose from serfdom to royalty.) Fernand's work documents the tenuousness of the hold on the high perches. (We see this today in the turnover of names in the Forbes's lists.)
The majority great ideas and plans never reach the light of day, at least not in the lifetime of the developer. The aspiring person who actually "makes it" is a survivor of an socio-econoimic process whose odds of success are akin to the chances of a individual sperm fertilizing an egg: A million failures accompany one success. Awareness of these odds results in the survivor having an attitude that can range from hubris to humility. You either brag about being a good swimmer or, like Ulysses, you thank the gods that washed you ashore
The ability of a human to think of changing his lot in life, to conceive that such a transformation is possible, is "new." Harold Bloom dates this psychological development to Elizabethan times and suggests that Shakespeare was the first (and best) to articulate the internal dialog that accompanies it. For the preceeding tens of thousands of years humans' future was fated. For the last 500 years success is a play rehearsed in the mind then acted out on life's stage.
So what's the connection to marketing luxury products and services?
The newly wealthy approach the consideration of luxury goods and services with an eye to more than aesthetics, pleasure, value or status. Among all the other questions is the one: "Who am I that I own/drive/fly/drink/eat/wear/etc. and have this rare experience?"
After making their fortune they must make sense of themselves and their new situation. Shakespearean characters engage in a soliloquy about who they are and the meaning of life while holding a dagger, a skull, a chalice or some other prop. Today's self-made person has the soliloquy while holding the wheel of the new Bentley.
The luxury brand must be capable of a dialog. It must convey individuality and meaning. Its very presence must articulate why it, too, is the survivor of an equally Darwinian process and worthy of being in the front seat with the driver.
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