Pre-Day: Monday, March 16, 2009

A – International Luxury Marketing Benchmark Summit
B - Luxury Web Management Essentials Workshop

Main Agenda - Day One: Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Start: 9:00am
End: 5:30pm

AM - General Sessions
Leaders Driving Integrated Luxury Marketing

Scarcity used to define luxury. Growing wealth and increased global distribution have made luxury goods more accessible and affordable than ever before. Today’s luxury connoisseur still values exclusivity, but defined by unique experiences rather than high price tags. For this breed of consumers, “Luxury” is about uniqueness, self-expression and being on the cutting edge of trends.

Therefore, luxury brands need to offer unique experiences across all channels and touch points – both online and offline. They need leadership to interlink the online and offline world and drive unified, personalised and customised luxury experiences for greater results in the high net worth marketplace.

Capitalising On The Latest Trends And Developments In The Affluent Market – An Analyst Overview
An economic assessment and its effect on luxury spending around the globe taking emerging trends and market developments into account. Hear which trends are occurring in the luxury market sector and how these affect affluent, wealthy and ultra-wealthy customers around the world.

1. Shedding assumptions about the affluent consumer
2. Developments that affect the behaviour of the wealthy
3. Understanding the new, totally connected luxury consumer

Keynote Panel: Leaders As The Engine To Luxury Interactive Success
To create an effective luxury marketing strategy, a key ingredient is to have an internal ‘evangelist’; a senior executive with access to the CEO and the board to drive internal acceptance and support. Another key ingredient is the integration of your marketing and e-business teams, who too often work in silos striving to meet different business objectives.

1. Defining the key elements of your integrated luxury marketing programme
2. Obtaining the buy-in of key stakeholders within your organization
3. Getting your entire organisation to think the same way
4. Creating a phased roadmap for success

Dividing Your Luxury Marketing Budget To Optimise The Return On Your Spend
The luxury marketing landscape has spread rapidly in recent years to include budget for online channels besides traditional marketing spend. The online marketing space is part digital marketing and part online advertising. Which percentage of your marketing budget should be spend on traditional and interactive marketing? Where should you focus your interactive budget to obtain the best results for your company?

1. Dividing your marketing budget between traditional and interactive marketing activities
2. Assessing the ROI of your marketing activities across channels – where will you gain the most value?
3. Identifying where to spend your interactive budget within digital; how much to allocate for SEM, email marketing, online advertising, site development, social networking, mobile

Luxury Interactive From A Futurist Viewpoint
During this inspirational session we take luxury interactive one step further and hypothesise the future wave of Internet innovation and how it affects luxury consumers and brands. What’s going to happen next and how will it affect your interactive strategy? What can we learn from other sectors and markets?

Co-Creating Your Luxury Brand With Your Customers: Are You Opposed Or In Favour? (Panel)
“Luxury comes from exclusivity. Individualism equals exclusivity. So by definition, every time a brand gives room to consumers to express their individualism, it becomes a luxurious and exclusive good.” – Implying co-creation of your luxury brand is the way forward. “On the other hand, one could also argue luxury brands should never empower consumers as that would create an unobtainable in itself.” How do you intend to manage your relationships with the affluent consumer of the future?

PM – Track A
Leaders Driving Integrated Luxury Marketing - Continued

The Digital Agency Selection Process: How Do They Measure Up? (Panel)
Luxury brands are steadily increasing their digital marketing spend and activities. Key to developing and furthering your digital strategy is to find the right digital agency partner. However, so many of you are having difficulty doing so.

1. Identifying which agency has the specialty to meet your digital marketing requirements
2. Effective ways for your traditional and digital agencies to collaborate with you towards achieving an integrated marketing approach
3. Setting your expectations for the partnership and a continuous evaluation process
4. Obtaining results and data from your partners to further develop your digital strategy

The People Factor I: Assessing Organisational Readiness For Integrated Luxury Retailing (Panel)
The difficulty in online retailing often doesn’t lie with the operational side, but in assessing your organisation’s opportunities and readiness. We discuss how moving to a multi-channel organisation including a transactional online channel is inextricably linked to and driven by
effective management of people and processes within an organisation.

1. Setting measurable objectives representing both the management and the operational eBusiness side to make change happen
2. Legacy Migration; tackling existing attitudes within your company
3. Aligning the organisation:
4. Bridging internal silos
5. Taking a cross-functional, multi-stream adoption approach
6. Integrated and multi-channel retailing – the web is not ‘just another store’

Protecting Your Brand & Intellectual Property Online
The sales of counterfeit goods have been making headlines lately. In the UK alone, the online sales of counterfeit goods totals £800m annually according to DLA Piper, a global legal services organisation. The growth in online shopping means that counterfeiters have more direct and discreet channels to reach consumers. Luxury brands need to battle both physical and online counterfeiting activities as well as IP infringements on trademarks and domain names.

1. Overcoming digital content piracy issues  and trademark infringements
2. Detecting unsolicited and/or unwanted attention
3. Assessing the quality of your partners and affiliates
4. Battling the online counterfeiters and enablers

The People Factor II: Building Your Brand Through Better Talent Management
As your brand continues cross-channel and international expansion and faces increasing competition it is key to develop an integrated, leading marketing function to ensure long-term success. We assess what leaders can do to develop a joint online and offline marketing team with the skills and will to achieve your integrated objectives.

1. Which skills are most critical in building your brand? Are they the same in each market?
2. What roles are required within the integrated marketing function? What are the performance expectations for these roles?
3. How can the company effectively attain and develop its talent to meet expectations?
4. Blueprinting the integrated marketing organisation, enabling you to manage and measure its talent and lead the department into the future

Champagne Idea Xchange & Executive Roundtables
Table 1              Enveloping luxury customers in a luxury experience through integrated cross-channel campaigns
Table 2              Assessing how satisfied your customers are with researching, buying and servicing in various channels
Table 3              Selecting your digital agency partner
Table 4              Convincing the people in your organisation of your multi-channel path

Join our roundtable facilitators and thought leaders as they explore a full range of topics affecting your online strategies. For updates on moderators and table leaders, please visit www.luxury-global.com

PM – Track B
Luxury Online Brand Activity

Luxury brands are actively experimenting to identify the interactive brand marketing activities that will deliver the best return. Regularly, interesting online projects find themselves sidelined because they can’t deliver the expected ROI within 3-6 months as traditional media does. It is time to explore when to expect and how to measure the ROI of PR and educational activities on the Worldwide Web. Also, how do you intend to communicate with today’s and tomorrow’s affluent consumer; are you ready to co-create your brand?

Justifying Your Interactive Marketing Investments By Building The Business Case
Most luxury brands have a lifetime of experience in successfully selling the luxury lifestyle to affluent consumers through traditional marketing methods. However, now that affluent consumers have massively adopted interactive communication channels how is your brand embracing an interactive, multi-channel marketing approach as well? Luxury marketers can sell digital campaigns internally by constructing a rich business case of both numbers and success stories. In this session we explore how you can justify interactive marketing investments for your brand through case studies, ROI models, benchmarking, metrics and industry research data.

Engaging In Luxury ‘Brand Conversations’ Through Web 2.0 Technologies (Panel)
Web 2.0 offers luxury marketing executives exciting opportunities to add depth to the online brand  and user experience to your customers online. It is time for you to take advantage of the range of technologies enabling you to do so. We discuss new media tools such as live video feeds, widgets, blogs, emails, mobile WAP content and online communities to offer branded experiential content that will help you convey your brand message to your customers.

1. Assessing the positive and negative implications of social media in a luxury retail environment
2. Sorting through the Web 2.0 technologies to identify those who offer the best ROI for you
3. Considering the Implications of social media for your IT infrastructure

Auditing Your Brand Image Online (Panel)
There are three key reasons to audit your brand activity online:
1. To help you assess the breadth and depth of your brand reach
2. To identify the ROI of your interactive and experimental marketing activities
3. To learn how your customers communicate with your brand

However, the online world is so wide; how can you locate and track all customer and brand image interactions? We discuss how to map your online brand image and activities by scanning blogs, chat rooms, message boards, affiliate partners and social media hubs and how you can use these insights to your benefit.

Brand Building In A Dizzying Digital World
In this wired world, three disciplines are converging to create the digital brand experience to connect you with your customers: brand, technology and usability. These three elements are crucial to your customer’s trust in the products and services you provide. It is essential you create a compelling digital brand strategy, placing improved buyer experience on centre stage to ultimately achieve a positive impact on the bottom line. This case study demonstrates several  innovations to drive customer engagement and satisfaction.

1. Creating visual and interactive experiences for your Customers
2. Acquiring customers through your digital marketing efforts
3. Using your customer advocates to provide a communal voice on your site

Champagne Idea Xchange & Executive Roundtables
Table 1              Engaging in brand conversations with your customers
Table 2              Auditing your brand image and activities online
Table 3              Assessing the value of social media activities & experiments
Table 4              Examples of excellent multi-media campaigns and destination websites

Join our roundtable facilitators and thought leaders as they explore a full range of topics affecting your online strategies.

Cocktail Party 7pm-8:30pm

Main Agenda - Day Two: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Start: 9:00am
End: 3:00pm

AM - General Sessions
Affluent Demographic & Behavioural Insights

According to a new study by Forrester Research, around 80% of high-net-worth consumers* use the Internet daily, and they regularly buy products online but only a third of the world's premium brands sell their goods online.

Research reports show wealthy consumers are some of the most tech-savvy consumers in the world. Luxury brands should be wary of denying the web adoption of their customers; the make-up, expectations and demands of their customers have changed and it is essential to communicate with your customers in their ‘language’ of preference at all times; be it on- or offline.

* in Western societies defined as those with annual gross income and assets of at least $500,000

Keynote Panel: Determining The Right Marketing Mix And Channel Relationships For Your Luxury Brand
Many luxury brands continue to separate their online and offline marketing efforts, confusing customers with disconnected messaging and missing golden opportunities to cross-support expensive marketing initiatives. To inspire long-term, loyal relationships with today’s new breed of luxury consumers you must understand how they want to relate to your brand. They expect an emotionally rewarding and affirmative experience with each luxury brand interaction.

CRM Re-Visited: Full Data Integration To Drive Service Improvements & Loyalty
In this session we create a vision of true relationship marketing in which customer service, customer centricity and marketing come together. Interactions at all customer touch-points and customer generated content can drive product and service improvements if monitored and interpreted well. In this hands-on session we explore how to capture the voice of your customer accurately and discern actionable information from your interactions.

1. Assessing the quality of your CRM data, analytics and results
2. Integrating your website data with customer information from all other channels globally
3. Maintaining and managing your comprehensive customer data warehouse over time
4. Achieving full CRM data access per customer across all channels and markets

Unforgettable Experiences; Building Customers For Life (Panel)
The French shoe designer Christian Louboutin once said, "I see these men who build luxury brands to make money, and I am working in the same industry but I feel I have nothing in common with that. Luxury is the possibility to stay close to your customers."
Luxury is about presenting a dream to the customer from the day the customer enters the stores onward. Creating an unforgettable customer service experience across all communication channels is vital for all luxury brands. The goal of the luxury brand is to create an experience so amazing for the customer that it will be remembered even twenty years down the line. What is the best way forward?

PM - Track A
Affluent Demographic & Behavioural Insights - Continued

Keeping Your Cross-Channel Customers Content (Panel)
The Internet has become just one of many channels – like email, phone and chat – that consumers weave in and out of on a daily basis. But many luxury companies fail to provide customer experiences that seamlessly transition between channels.

1. Assessing how satisfied your customers are with researching, buying and servicing in various channels
2. Achieving consistency of multi-channel brand messages
3. Enabling your design team to create great cross-channel customer experiences
4. Integrating interactive elements into physical store environments

Gathering Offline Customer Data To Help Create 360° Profiles
How useful is your online customer data if you don’t have insights how it relates to in-store behaviour? Many companies don’t know how their customers behave in-store or at a wholesale point of sale, but this would be extremely useful when integrating cross-channel marketing activities.

1. Innovative tools and methods for gathering and storing your customer touch point data
2. Identifying the demographics of your customers per sales channel
3. Analysing the quality and quantity of your customer data and extracting actionable information

Key Success Factors To Improve The Retention Of Your Valued Customers (Panel)
Your customers are becoming increasingly immune to traditional media messages and less loyal to your brand as a result. They want to be engaged and nurtured by you. Also, the cost to retain an existing customer is far less than finding a new one. By embracing the following best practices, your organisation can effectively retain its customers.

1. Success factors for retention marketing
2. Assessing key loyalty drivers across different channels per affluent segment
3. Creating and maintaining luxury service benchmarks
4. Recapturing lost customers and keeping them loyal

Creating An Individual Experience For Each Customer Through Advanced Personalisation
Luxury brand lovers are not a homogeneous group; they display considerable differences in spending power, spending frequency, brand loyalty and purchase motivations. To reflect each customer’s personal preferences and appeal to their senses, luxury brands need to embark on extensive personalisation and segmentation projects.

1. Creating an integrated customer behaviour intelligence system
2. Developing segments and persona’s based on your customer data
3. Applying behavioural data to your website to realise true individual shopping experiences

Finding The Right Balance Of Low-Cost And Advanced Segmentation & Personalisation Strategies
Many luxury retailers work with a low budget for site personalisation and segmentation. Others simply don’t have the data to back it up. Today’s speaker explains how to launch your website personalisation features based on customer profiles. We also detail the bumps in the road you may encounter in seeking the perfect balance between detailed and low-cost personalisation & segmentation strategies to make the most of each customer interaction based on transactional, click-stream, customer service and newsletter/campaign data.

1. Gathering anonymous personalisation data and making the most of it
2. Building customer profiles based on click-stream data
3. Providing specific offers based on a probability model
4. Finding the right balance between advanced and basic personalisation methods

PM – Track B
Luxury eBusiness

The internet is becoming increasingly dominated by blogs, online communities, message boards and other social media activities. You can either stand on the sideline or actively engage your customers in dialogue. Luxury brands are increasingly focusing on offering online shopping experiences and creating content-driven destination websites as only relevant communications and customer engagement will keep your brand top of mind.

Experiential Luxury Online: Creating A Destination For Your Customers (Panel)
How can you create a destination website for your customers, where they can truly immerse themselves in your retail experience? Today’s panellists share how they engage their customers and drive loyalty by translating the in-store experience online through interactive concepts.

1. Ensuring content and message relevance of your destination website to the affluent consumer
2. Technologies of today and tomorrow that provide an experiential online experience worth the investment
3. Creating an online discovery process to keep your customers engaged and smitten with your brand

Panel Discussion: Assessing And Leveraging Social Mediums And Shopping Sites To Communicate With Today’s Consumer
Today’s lifestyle blogs are carrying an innumerable amount of power in the consumer purchase consideration cycle. As aggregators of digital content, their level of influence is similar to magazine editors. Online social shopping sites take one step further by creating an interactive, personal and communal online experience that replicates going shopping with a group of friends.
Join this panel discussion to find out how these user-generated models arbitrate and disseminate your brand online.

Mini Case Studies: Examples Of Advanced Transactional Website Development
Three 20 minute case studies showcase real-life examples of:

1. Enhancing your overall buying experience with increased speed to checkout and streamlining your selling experience
2. Balancing rich content with usability on your luxury website
3. Deploying multi-variate testing methods to drive site improvements

The three case studies are followed by a joint panel Q&A with the audience.

To Blog Or Not To Blog: Assessing The Benefits And Challenges Of This Social Media Initiative
With some prominent global retailers creating successful blogs, it is time to review the potential value of blogging for luxury companies.

1. What makes a successful blog and what doesn’t
2. Challenges in creating and maintaining a blog
3. Ensuring your blog is relevant to your customers
4. Guarding your brand online – knowing when to speak and when to remain silent
5. Does it make sense for your company to create a blog?

Establishing Your Own Luxury Online Community To Further Your Customer Relationships
Luxury always was and always will be about the relationships. Now that that marketing tools have evolved, so must your marketing strategy. We discuss how to reap the full benefits of luxury 2.0 by hosting your own online community to further your customer relationships in contemporary style.

• Requirements to build and maintain your own online community
• Tying your community into new product launches and cross-channel opportunities
• Turning your online tribal leaders into the best advocates of your brand