Advertising Alone Cannot Create Brand Premiumness
Most non-luxury brands try to advertise their way into premium pricing.
Nearly all fail.
Because they're optimizing for the wrong lever.
They skip structural strategy work and jump straight to ads.
Brand premiumness is the customer perception that a brand deserves a higher price than alternatives. Rarely due to rational product features, but rather to the emotional space it occupies and the quality associations it builds.
Premiumness lives in emotional territory, not rational math. It's how a brand makes you feel, the renewed identity it can give you, or the aspirations it embodies.
That is why most luxury advertising says almost nothing about the product.
High emotion, minimal explanation, desire first, minimal rational justification.
Warren Buffett famously assessed businesses through pricing power, the ability to raise prices without losing customers. For brands, premiumness is what creates that power. But it cannot be manufactured by communication alone.
3 Strategic Shifts for Premiumness
- Product Architecture Beats Advertising
Production quality is no longer a moat. Technology and AI have democratized video executions. Beautiful work is cheap. Distinctive offers are not.
It's why premiumness must start with the offer itself. Product design, packaging, formats, variants, retail presence. When brands create premium tiers that intentionally redefine value, advertising can amplify that signal.
Lay's launching Gourmet is a good example. By introducing a higher-end tier that intentionally cannibalizes the core, the world's number 1 food brand creates real differentiation that advertising can reinforce, not fabricate.
- Celebrities are credibility signals, not shortcuts
Talent can enhance perceived premium, but only if it validates something real. A single execution cannot borrow, meaning it has not earned.
Unless a brand is ready for a long-term image relationship, celebrity use mostly buys reach, not pricing power.
Acknowledge that you are competing with "their" brands. What Kim Kardashian, Mr. Beast, and, very recently, Sydney Sweeney did to project desire in their offers is unachievable for most brands. What can we learn from them? Celebrities act as brand gravitational forces; they are always there, attracting their customers.
3. Consistently signal through micro-decisions
Premiumness lives in details: packaging weight, unboxing experience, customer service tone, and store environment. Advertising should showcase these tangible expressions of quality rather than declare premium status. Show, don't tell.
The brands with true pricing power understand this: premiumness is a system where advertising amplifies what the entire experience delivers.
It's built on equity and emotion, reinforced by every touchpoint, not manufactured by advertising alone.
You do not advertise your way to premium.
You earn it, then communicate it.