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Luxury Branding: Digital Makes It Personal

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Robert Rippee has been Senior Vice President of Marketing for The Venetian and The Palazzo since December 2011. Both of these luxury hotel-casino resorts are owned by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Prior to joining Sands Corporation, Robert ran his own luxury marketing consultancy based in Charleston, South Carolina and taught luxury marketing in the MBA program at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. His experience in luxury branding, especially in the hospitality industry, is extensive. Prior to his business career, Robert served as a Navy pilot for ten years. He also sits on the Advisory Board of Eleven Wireless which unifies guest online services using a cloud-based platform. Ron Beyma conducted this interview with Robert Rippee for Graj's Brand Anatomy – the Simon Graj blog series for Forbes.

How did your interest in luxury branding evolve?

After several years in the hospitality industry, I began noticing the advantages  enjoyed by luxury brands in this sector. My affinity for luxury marketing is also a lifestyle interest. I spent a great deal of time with Ritz Carlton when it was experiencing dramatic growth in the late nineties and early millennium years, but it was still a small company in many respects. This time was formative to my understanding of both the luxury consumer and luxury products.

You were with Ritz as it was spending considerable time defining its mission and customer-service principles.

Exactly. I was there when they won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award a second time and was one of the front-line marketing people interviewed by the Selection Committee. These quality experts asked very good questions – questions that went beyond the ideas that won the company the Award the first time. The second time around was a test of how the company fared in actually implementing the principles.

One is led to believe that luxury brands enjoy a universality worldwide. Is this assumption accurate?

Somewhat. The common thread is the customer, and there is a certain universality to the luxury customer. This isn't about demographics or affluence per se, but about the desire to have unique things and experiences that are special at a personal level. Ultimately that defines luxury.

A recent program I saw on marketing discussed Scotland as a travel destination for affluent tourists. It described Scotland as it was being pitched to potential German visitors and to French ones as well. Interestingly, the Scotland presented in the two approaches wasn't at all the same.

That sort of differentiation highlights the uniqueness inherent to luxury marketing.

Regarding the gaming industry, how is the upper-tier of the Chinese luxury market influencing the development of that entire segment?

There are cultural and contextual desires and sensitivities for this segment that are, in many cases, unknown to most U.S. marketers. These include broad assumptions about Asians or the Chinese which may or may not be true. Luxury marketing demands a much more precise cultural understanding. Even accurate cultural awareness isn't enough. Whenever possible, you want to push understanding down to the individual level. Then you need to create messaging and cultural experiences that are relevant and desirable for particular individuals and their unique emotional drivers.

At the Venetian and the Palazzo, your spectrum includes a wide array of marketing sectors.

We are very large casino and hospitality operations. Our show business dimension is also gigantic.  For example, we just opened Tim McGraw & Faith Hill at the Venetian. Additionally, we are both an entertainment and a retail marketer.  With 33 restaurants, we are a food-and-beverage marketer. And, forty percent of our business is B-to-B conventions and trade shows.

Beyond bricks-and-mortar, luxury market identities are also evolving in cyberspace. Does this Internet world converge with the tangible one?

The question is logical, but I'm not sure about the intersection. From a bricks-and-mortar perspective, luxury marketing addresses the experience. That includes the quality of service helping to produce the distinctive memories guests take away. From a digital or online perspective, luxury is also about the experience, but that challenge is more about being relevant to the unique individual. Many luxury brands fail to address the latter and still regard the digital domain as simply a billboard. They don't use this channel to communicate relevant information and create dialogue with people as individuals.

And misguided luxury marketers thereby ignore the whole range of customization issues and opportunities?

Absolutely. They may try to promote certain types of content, but the Web makes brands transparent. The customer, especially at the luxury level, instantly sees when the Web is being used to push advertising messages at them.

To what extent are social media affecting the range of marketing sectors with which you're involved?

The impact is massive. I just participated in a global CIO conference in Frankfurt sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. The audience for that conference indicates the breadth of social media's impact. When a senior marketing exec is talking to CIOs, it shows the degree to which technology and content have now converged in social media. Companies that fail to understand this convergence are running with blinders on. Effective marketing hinges on the ability to use the incredible information social media provide.  Firms can now have direct dialogue with individuals without intermediaries. You don't need ads or even a visit to spur dialogue. You can converse with them in their own homes.

Don't these advances reconfigure the texture of brand decision-making in the C-suite?

The power of the technology model rests on its being instant. The information may have a half-life of mere minutes in which you have the opportunity to act or react. Traditional ROI business models still have a role. But, social media interactions happen, by definition, in real time. The real-time factor demands both "handling speed" and an immediate ability to provide outcomes that match what the specific customer is looking for.

At times, do you feel jettisoned back to your Navy pilot days? Today's marketer is dealing with experiences in a highly visceral way, and the decision tree is moving along at a supersonic clip.

The pilot analogy is a very good one. Pilots are extremely well prepared for an array of possible contingencies. Yet they're in that cockpit moving at 500 mph. Pilots don't have time to call someone and get approval. Pilots are trusted, well-trained and sent on their mission.

How, as a case in point, does this more personalized and immediate dedication of your professional time square with your own job description?

Social media easily consume the majority of my time today. Quite honestly, I was brought here to change my job description, not to manage things as they were. I use the term disruptive marketing. The gaming and hospitality industries have suffered from a lot of me-too marketing. In a way, my job description started out as a blank sheet of paper. A considerable amount of time in each of my days is spent working on social media, on digital and on content strategy. Very little of my time is spent thinking about advertising or other traditional activities normally included in my role. As to my organization, I'm also active in recruiting and hiring a team that holds the same outlook as I do.

Are there other people taking care of these traditional routines . . . or have these areas simply become less important?

The latter. These areas have less importance today, as they should. It's a result of transformation in the marketing world. I know Simon Graj thinks this, and it's brought out very clearly in his blog posts. Views of both the customer and the brand have changed. In my talks at the University of Georgia Business School, I would remind the students that "Mad Men" is a TV show, not at all a marketing reality any more.

That's surely so, but huge budgets are involved here. Won't they be completely recontoured and redeployed as a result of this transformation?

It's a question of reallocation. The moves to digital and social media bring with them efficiencies. In some cases, the budgets are redirected through the creation of original marketing content. A great deal is at stake – not just the budgets, but the implications of those budgets for the revenues they are designed to produce.

When you think of your luxury customer, could you share any signature images that might help make this customer more concrete or graphic?

That's a very difficult question to answer. Ten years ago, I could have pretty readily created personas for you. Today I literally  visualize thousands of people – each with unique tastes, but each of them also saying: "I only like what I like, what's important to me."

Simon has talked about this shift in brand identity from resting inside the company to being something that the customer experiences. If there is a common element in the luxury sector, it's the transparency of the brand I alluded to earlier. Luxury customers are smart. They can see through any brand almost instantly . In a few clicks, they can find out anything about our brand they want to know. The days are gone when you can attach the word luxury and have consumers automatically believe your promise. In no longer than a Google search, they will establish if you really are or aren't. Are you really only  "high quality" – for example – and have you just attached the word luxury to describe yourself?

What's the foremost impact for brand messaging?

Authenticity. Being real and having dialogue.

Is customization available in the marketing sectors where you do business, especially in gaming? Is gaming a customizable event?

Very much so. Its technology base lends itself to exactly that opportunity. While I can't share the details, it is the very technology that enables customization opportunities.

Will there also be more customization in offering the socialized gaming experience in the bricks-and-mortar venue?

You see that already with more attention to groups and to the socialization factor, as well as to the character of the experience being more interesting to visitors. For example, the references to motion pictures. People have an affinity for that kind of environment, and it's the type of backdrop we can re-create.

Will the worlds of bricks-and-mortar gaming and cyberspace gaming become more similar and homogeneous in the future?

No . . . and you can observe why not every minute, every day. Walk through a well-managed casino, and you see people having fun – raising their hands, being excited. Look around a craps table, and you will see people experience being part of a socializing community cheering others on. That fun and excitement will never go away. Games can be played on the Internet, but you can't replace this social element.