Luxury Unfiltered: The new codes of luxury for 2025

January 8, 2025

Daniel Langer is the founder and CEO of consulting firm Équité.

The luxury landscape is undergoing a profound transformation.

The traditional markers that many associate with luxury – including high prices, prominent logos, and heritage - are no longer sufficient to guarantee success. Instead, brands must adapt to a new set of codes that prioritize extreme value creation, compelling storytelling and deep consumer connections.

The huge challenge that many brands face is a result of a dramatic change in client expectations from luxury as objects to luxury as meaning. This has profound implications on how brands need to be managed.

The shifting paradigm of luxury
The concept of luxury is evolving beyond price tags and logos. The true essence of luxury lies in creating extreme value for clients.

The challenge for many brands is that each new exceptional experience sets a new benchmark to be exceeded again and again. Thus, what worked in the past won’t work in the future.

In a recent luxury masterclass in Paris, one participant asked me, “Where does it end? How is it possible to set the bar higher and higher?” My answer: It never ends.

Strategies and executions that worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. It’s a reality that is sometimes hard to accept but necessary to stay relevant.

The problem for most brands is that they don’t speak the language of their clients anymore. Up to 95 percent of brands, according to Équité Research, have significant potential to make a massive leap if they optimize their brand storytelling.

Extreme value creation depends on reaching the emotional and psychological needs of the clients, requiring brands to deeply understand and cater to their desires and expectations.

The power of brand storytelling
In the current luxury landscape, a compelling brand story is not just nice to have.

It’s not an advertising campaign. It’s the core foundation of the brand.

Yet I see many brands not only underestimating the importance but leaving the execution to communication teams and advertising agencies who have no experience in dissecting and optimizing the core values of brands.

Most brand manuals I reviewed in my career are nothing else than good-looking documents with no meaning. Lots of beautiful words that sound nice but don’t provide brand teams any actionable guidance.

The result: brands sink in the sea of sameness. As part of what I do, I train commercial and sales teams of some of the many luxury brands around the world.

Every time a brand has difficulty in expressing clearly who they are, it’s nearly impossible for those who are supposed to inspire clients to do so.

The lack of brand storytelling combined with not enough training for client facing teams are the two main causes why many luxury brands are losing traction with clients. If there is no brand story and if teams don’t know how to convey it, then there is no value.

This storytelling deficit is so severe that I predict that up to 50 percent of today’s luxury brands may disappear by 2030.

Transformative training: The key to exceptional experiences
One of the most powerful tools luxury brands have at their disposal is transformative training.

Traditional training methods that focus on basic sales techniques are no longer sufficient. Today’s luxury clients expect an intangible aura of prestige, a seamless fusion of personalized engagement and the emotional pull of a compelling brand story.

Transformative training is crucial for meeting significantly higher client expectations, delivering extraordinary experiences and creating unforgettable brand interactions. As noted in a recent luxury training session, “You don’t want to be the ones who, in the eyes of clients, waste their time.”

The rise of experiential luxury and the trust deficit
Investors are increasingly favoring experiential luxury. This shift reflects a broader trend of consumers prioritizing unique experiences over just owning material goods, especially among younger demographics.

This is why, as stated before, creating meaning is so critical. Brands need to develop clarity on why people should care.

If they don’t, people won’t care. It’s that simple.

As a result, it’s not surprising that brands lost trust. It’s reflected in an all-time high of luxury clients, indicating that prices are too high.

When luxury brands are facing a significant trust deficit it leads to a loss of clients and revenue. But rebuilding trust is not done with a marketing campaign or hiring a new designer.

Once trust is lost, rebuilding it takes time. To rebuild trust, brands must ensure quality and value match rising prices and deliver on promises of exceptional experiences.

In luxury, there is no space for compromise.

Embracing cultural authenticity and personalization
The future of luxury lies in cultural authenticity and hyper-personalized products and experiences.

Brands that can successfully integrate local cultural elements while offering tailored experiences to individual clients have a significant advantage.

Today’s luxury clients expect that what they buy is a true reflection of who they are.

The imperative of innovation
I am writing today’s column from Shanghai where I am delivering a luxury masterclass for a group owning several iconic luxury brands, and there is no better place to witness the importance of innovation.

Innovation is not just about creativity in creating products but also in understanding how to inspire clients. In China, there are now more than 100 million (!) paid influencers and live streamers, many of them earning their entire livelihoods influencing clients.

When brands don’t understand paradigm shifts like these that also include the irrelevance of websites in China and a shift to social e-commerce, they will lose relevance fast.

Innovation requires understanding audience behavior, experiences and understanding, and in a world that changes faster than ever before, the speed of change within organizations needs to increase disproportionately.

A sense of urgency
The new codes of luxury for 2025 demand a holistic approach that goes beyond traditional markers of prestige.

Brands that can create extreme value, tell compelling stories, deliver exceptional experiences through transformative training, embrace cultural authenticity and innovate consistently will be best positioned to lead the change in the fast-changing luxury landscape.

Those who don’t will not be relevant. Are you ready?

Luxury Unfiltered is a weekly column by Daniel Langer. He is the CEO of Équité, a global luxury strategy and creative brand activation firm, where he is the advisor to some of the most iconic luxury brands. He is recognized as a global top-five luxury key opinion leader. He serves as the executive professor of luxury strategy and pricing at Pepperdine University in Malibu and as a professor of luxury at New York University, New York. Dr. Langer has authored best-selling books on luxury management in English and Chinese and is a respected global keynote speaker.

Dr. Langer conducts masterclass management training on various luxury topics around the world. As a luxury expert featured on Bloomberg TV, Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, The Economist and others, Mr. Langer holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in luxury management and has received education from Harvard Business School. Follow him on LinkedIn and Instagram, and listen to his Future of Luxury Podcast.

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