We can easily apply lessons learned from Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre’s latest campaign to health & wellness tourism marketing.
Jaeger-LeCoultre’sis using a realistic approach in its new advertising campaign to connect with consumers on a more intimate level.
The “Open a Whole New World” campaign features a number of real-world individuals with careers in a wide variety of industries. By sharing these personal stories, Jaegar-LeCoultre is showing that its products are attainable and compatible with a many different lifestyles. As with most luxury timepiece brands, leveraging heritage is a primary component of their positioning in the marketplace. This campaign in particular is a natural fit due to the nostalgic aesthetic they’ve seamlessly integrated into the creative.
Further, Jaeger-LeCoultre is a brand with a diverse line-up of time pieces and the creative follows suit with everything from a gent reflecting in a chair to another finishing up a polo match. The message of higher net worth, however, is subtle but present. Polo player, doctor, and actress and movie director all infer the “other than bargain basement” consumers to whom they are messaging. Could this work to resonate with upper middle-class health and wellness tourism consumers? Absolutely!
One in a million
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s campaign focused on the differences between professional careers, using a diverse array of individuals from different industries. Polo champion Eduardo Novillo Astrada was photographed standing beside his horse. Actress and director Carmen Chaplin stood in front of a large camera. And Dr. Craig Venter posed in his study to represent his career as a DNA researcher.
By highlighting the unique aspects of each individual’s life, Jaeger-LeCoultre is emphasizing the fact that its products can be worn in a wide variety of situations. The brand is showing that it is compatible with many lifestyles and welcoming consumers from different industries to incorporate Jaeger-LeCoultre products into their own lives.
Medical tourism can draw many parallels from this. A health and wellness tourism must research its past clientele and find similar samples, reach out and arrange for testimonials, and develop a similar campaign.
Like a Jaeger-LeCoultre rose gold reverso (my all time favorite), a medical tourism product offering is isn’t for just one type of consumer. A certain level of affluence is a common denominator due to price positioning, but the way in which consumers wear their timepieces varies greatly. Medical tourism has a similar situation going on, in that one has to be able to afford the cost of the travel and the healthcare, usually out of pocket – which is after all, many multiples the cost of a Jaeger-LeCoultre timepiece, when you think about it.
With the Jaeger-LeCoultre, you might find one wearer enjoying the ruggedness of a dive watch while another is admiring the beautiful sonnerie of a minute repeater. While their chosen subject matter is quite varied in the creative, the underlying aesthetic is consistent and stunning. In health tourism, we can crosswalk this over to parallels of heart surgery and aesthetic surgery.
Jaeger-LeCoultre is also sharing behind-the-scenes images from the campaign to increase its intimate appeal. Consumers enjoy seeing these more casual photographs because it makes them feel more connected with the brand. This is easily applied to health and wellness tourism.
Getting Personal
Other luxury brands have used the unique appeal of real individuals to forge more intimate connections with consumers. For example, French fashion house Lanvin highlighted its own familial bond with the winter 2014 advertising campaign, which starred model Edie Campbell and her relatives.
To introduce the campaign, Lanvin filmed a three-minute video of the family members interacting with each other through a stand-alone door. This floating house door acted as a playful metaphor for the maison, which was founded by a woman dedicated to making clothes for her daughter.
Using more diverse individuals can also show a brand’s willingness to embrace all identities and welcome consumers to purchase products. Department store chain Barneys New York recently aligned itself with the fight for transgender equality with an ad campaign and outreach. While that might not work in certain cultures where health and wellness tourism products are sold, the transgender, and LGBTQ market are big purchasers of health and wellness tourism products including assisted reproduction, cosmetic procedures and many other medical and surgical tourism products, including gender reassignment procedures.
The “Brothers, Sisters, Sons and Daughters” campaign from Barney’s featured 17 transgender individuals with diverse backgrounds and stories that were told through a series of short films. With this campaign, Barneys showed a more personal, human side to its brand that allows it to connect on a deeper level with consumers.
Jaeger-LeCoultre took a similar approach with its Open a Whole New World campaign. The choice of using real professions from different industries allowed the brand to show off its versatility.
The photos communicate a level of authenticity which is incredibly powerful towards leveraging the emotional triggers of a consumer. If their is the one thing that frustrates me the most, it is the overuse of certain stock images used in medical tourism advertising, websites, printed collateral that features the same doctors and nurses as if they work all over the world. The Jaeger-LeCoultre photographs are thought provoking, active and genuine which are characteristics often missed in luxury-centric campaigns. Then again, I think that too many health and wellness tourism marketing campaigns fail to consider the luxury-centric market and believe that they are addressing price sensitive, bargain basement shoppers.
Share Your Story
Have you considered the luxury-centric consumer in your marketing campaigns? How did you change up your message? What points did you emphasize to drive your message to this segment? Did it work? Please share some highlights with us.
