The luxury business has always been, at its core, a proposition about legibility — the idea that a handbag or a watch could be read by others as a statement about its owner's place in the world.
At the Cannes Lions festival this week, Coach's chief marketing officer suggested that many younger consumers have grown tired of being read and would prefer, instead, to do the reading themselves.
"Luxury used to be something you owned," said the executive, June Silverstein. "For Gen Z, luxury is something you express."
The observation emerged from what Ms. Silverstein described as a familiar problem for heritage brands: Coach had plenty of awareness but not enough relevance. "We had among the highest brand awareness in our category," she said, "but a new generation didn't feel like we were for them."
The company's response involved extensive conversations with young consumers around the world, one of which proved unexpectedly clarifying. When asked what books meant to her, a young woman paused and replied, "They're my portable refuge."
Ms. Silverstein said the answer revealed something beyond reading habits. "She was talking about identity, belonging and finding depth in a world that rarely slows down."
Coach eventually partnered with Penguin Random House on a campaign called Explore Your Story, which featured miniature, readable book charms attached to handbags — a sentence that would have seemed improbable in the luxury marketing of a decade ago. (Or perhaps any decade.)
Julia Holtback Yeter of Forsman & Bodenfors, the agency involved in the effort, said the response defied expectations. "We expected people to talk about the product," she said. "Instead, they started talking to one another."
The campaign appeared to benefit from a broader cultural moment in which BookTok has turned reading into a performative act and physical books have become, in their own way, accessories.
"The brands that will win with this generation aren't the brands with the highest awareness," Ms. Silverstein said. "They're the brands helping people express who they are."
It is a tidy formulation, and possibly even a true one — though it does leave open the question of whether helping people express themselves through purchasable book charms is meaningfully different from the old model of selling status through logos. The packaging has changed. The transaction remains.
Original story published in The Drum: "Coach thinks luxury is no longer about owning the right things | The Drum"