Philippe MIHAILOVICH, expert en Brand Architecture et consultant pour les plus grandes marques de luxe, est intervenu auprès des MBA Luxury Brand Management, Food and Wine de Bordeaux. Interview…
* In a few words, what is the « Brand Architecture »?
Brand Architecture is simply an ideal situation whereby one plans maison brands, sub-brands and product brands in terms of their hierarchy and market categories that they may wish to specialize in or stretch into before launching the first product or even before naming the brand.
Many mistakes are often made by a brand’s founders at the beginning after which they spend much of their future efforts trying to get out of the mess.
In more human terms, it’s a bit like family planning.
* What makes Luxury a special field in marketing?
Luxury brands have traditionally been small family businesses and their approach is exactly opposite to mass marketed brands. For instance, they may begin with one wonderful hand-made product that represents the best that a human being can make. That creator is often closer to being an artist than a businessman and may simply aim for an award in the category.
In the mass market, it tends to begin with a business plan. The big Luxury Brands that lead the way today have now evolved out of the family model and are having to learn the stringent discipline of Brand Management to compete on a world scale where there is less margin for error.
Luxury Brand Management tends to be a hybrid of the best of both worlds.
* In addition to being a renowned consultant, you are also involved in many schools as a visiting professor. What it the benefit for you?
In my courses students are encouraged to develop their own luxury brands concepts for any consumer market industry that interests them. As a result their projects not only test my models and thinking but they tend to expand my knowledge beyond areas that I would have chosen for myself.
In essence we should be learning from each other’s research and analysis.
* And what do you want to convey to students?
I simply want them to be better prepared than any other students from even more famous business schools, for adding value to the best brands in the world from the day they start. That’s what top companies expect from us all.
* How do you work with them during your conferences?
I tend to cover the essence of the most important texts and research papers in the field and often bring them live cases that I am working on so that they cannot find answers without original research and thought, unless of course they are cloaked in secrecy, which many are. I also tend to use some selected Harvard cases for lighter workshops.
* What would be your advice to a student who wants to work in the brand architecture?
My objective is to prepare students for effective brand management not brand architecture, as that is something that the CEO or Marketing Director will be doing with experienced brand strategists. Unfortunately brand architects tend to be called in when management have already created the mess, so its not a field for the inexperienced.
Only the most professional companies tend to have the modesty to approach us in advance as they cant afford to risk destroying their prime asset. You will notice that they are not even mentioned on my website because its like saying you’ve been to the doctor – people assume we are dealing with problems rather than finding opportunities.
