Luxury is a feeling: how to make your copy feel expensive
Writing luxury copy shouldn’t be any harder than writing copy for any other brand, right? Except when the spend is big, the words need to work extra hard to earn their keep. And just because people have cash, it’s a mistake to assume they part with it easily. We still need to work our copy socks off filling every word with value, context and vision.
So let’s have a look at some key things to look out for when we’re writing copy for luxury brands.
Word use
Let’s start simple. English is a rich language. We have a wonderful choice of many many words when we set out to describe something. So our job is to pick the word that feels the most luxurious. If you’re selling a luxury sofa, you want to tell people how comfortable it is. Only “comfy” feels like the place where you eat pizza and get ice cream on your pyjama top. Then again, “soft” feels too vague. But what about “plush” or “sumptuous”? This is a sofa where you retire with a glass of something classy.
Specificity
Sticking to language for now, and this one is a stalwart of brands like Marks and Spencer who want to tell you exactly how great their product is without sparing any of the detail. Let’s think about a pair of shoes. What are they made of? Leather? Or nubuck? Let’s think about a sandwich – is it full of tomatoes, or San Marzano tomatoes? That specificity creates a feeling of luxury. It gives you the sense that somebody somewhere has chosen that nubuck or those tomatoes just for you. And that feels nice.
Know your audience
Get to know your audience. Do some customer research if you can. Find out what they really value about your product and use that information in your copy. If you run a luxury travel concierge business, it’s probably not the efficient taxi bookings or organised hotel reservations that keep your customers coming back. It’s probably the little details: the fact you always make sure their room is stocked with their favourite coffee. Or that the cab that picks them up from the airport has a copy of their favourite newspaper waiting for them. Those are things you want in your copy.
Show the cost
Even people with all the money in the world want to get good value. Nobody wants to be taken for a mug, whether they’re spending £1, £100 or £10,000. So show them where their money’s going. Maybe it’s a watch with a very unique handmade internal mechanism. Or a service that involves many hours and a team of very skilled experts to accomplish. Perhaps the raw materials are extremely valuable. Or maybe there are very few of the item. Those are all things that will boost your copy.
Give it context
This is a great one if you’re new on the market and still earning your luxe stripes. Your product or service doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Can you relate it to similar products, lifestyles or vibes so that some of their shine rubs off on you? You could pitch your luxury biscuits as the perfect accompaniment to their mid-morning luxury coffee. Or pitch your fabulous slippers as the finishing touch to their luxury loungewear look.
Pitch the after
We always want to leave our reader with an image in their mind of life after they’ve hit “buy”. Problems solved, worries melted away, everything shiny and sparkly and easy. Well with luxury you can make this image even more real, even more tangible. How gorgeous is that glass of wine going to taste on a Friday night? How rich and creamy is that chocolate dessert going to taste at the end of their romantic dinner date? How cocooned are they going to feel under that supersize weighted blanket?
If you’d like to chat more about writing for your business, I’d love to hear from you.