2065 – Mastering Luxury Marketing: Insights on Emotional Engagement and Storytelling with Lilian Raji

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1:05With us right now, it's Lillian Raji. Lillian, it's great to have you. You are the president of the Lillian Raji Agency. Your website is lmrpr.com. To our friend that's listening, you can just click in the show notes. We've got a direct link, Lillian, to your website, but it's great to have you. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yes. Well, give us just an overview of the work that you do, who you serve, and kind of the impact you have in the world. Well, to put it simply, I help my customers, my clients gain loyalty from their customers. So as a PR, I've been in the PR industry for the last 20 years working with luxury high-end clients, watches, jewelry, hotels, et cetera.

1:48So when you deal at that level, there's a certain strategy in approaching the luxury consumer, and a lot of it is always emotion-driven. in. Now, you can say it's true for all marketing, but when it comes to luxury marketing, it is more important than any other aspect of it, right? Because I started out in the industry 20 years ago as being one of the top salespeople at Turner Watch Store, which is now Bukhara. The way I was able to sell$30 ,000 watches to people when the iPhone was still coming up and the iWatch was around is by feeding on their emotions. So when you're doing PR for luxury clients, and even if you're not a luxury focused company, if you focus more on the emotions of your customers, you're going to get them more involved with you and they're going to want to share your story with other people.

2:37So to bring it back into center, I help my clients create that luxury with their customers. Yeah. All right. Can you help us understand a little bit more of the emotions associated with luxury and what do the smartest luxury brands know about connecting with their ideal audience. So, um, are you, do you wear a watch? I wear an Apple watch. I'm far too practical. Okay. So here's the thing about selling luxury. Let's okay. I'll start with myself and then we'll, we'll build out from there. Um, I am a huge fan of Cartier. Like I, in addition to having my PR agency. I'm a writer. I write for National Jeweler Magazine.

3:24I also write for Forbes and I have a couple of other freelance places I write. So if you follow my National Jeweler column, you're going to see me mention Cartier all the time. I have no relationship with them. They've never given me any money, but they've taken a lot of my money. And the reason for that is that when I was working at Terno, Cartier was the first brand you saw when you walked into the store. And for me, I would always go get this watch called the Cartier Roadster and I'd wear it all day. and I enjoyed it. So that when I finally left Terno, left being a measly salesperson to start my own agency, the first thing I bought for myself was that Cartier Watch.

4:01It wasn't so that I could brag to anybody. It wasn't so for any other reason. It was because it had a meaning to me. It's like, okay, I spent two years selling this. Now I own it. So when you're creating the emotions for your customers, you really want to think about what is very special about your company, But it's very special about the product that you're putting out there. And why should I spend this amount of money on it? And especially when I'm dealing with another competitor. One of my favorite stories from my turn-on days and even still now, Jeje Le Kutzer is one of my favorite watch brands.

4:35And customers used to come in, and it was easy for me to sell because I'd sit there, I'd get their hand, and I'll tell them the story of the reversal watch. If you're not familiar with Yeager Le Couture or Yeager Le Couture, they have a watch where it has two faces. It's a triangle-shaped watch where it has two faces. So I tell the story to the customer. Do you know why it has two faces? They're like, no, why? It's because polo players want to be able to wear their watches while playing polo. so in order to keep the uh the the doll from being cracked the cursor from being cracked they Jaeger create these watches to flip it around so that you're playing polo you flip it around it's safe the game is over you flip it back around you can have you can still wear the watch and people will get enamored with the story to the point where they after they bought the watch for me they come back in with with uh with their friends for me to tell them that story because it It gave the watch more meaning than simply being a watch.

5:37And that's what it comes down to when you're doing this kind of marketing. You want to get past practicality. For you, again, I probably could sell you a watch. Honestly, Josh, I could probably sell you a Tag Heuer. You look like a Tag Heuer, man. I'm pretty sure I could. Yeah, I don't know. I'm like barely. I only started wearing an app. The last watch before my Apple Watch was a calculator watch in eighth grade. So good luck. Okay. So then let me ask you then, how do you celebrate your successes when you have a great win in your life? How do you say I'm with my wife, like just time off, relax.

6:10I just get away from like it's it's, you know, she and I just spending that time together. So for me, like, again, and people value different things, you know, and I think that's different for each person. And but yeah, I like and I think, too, I wonder this as well, like with age and experience, how that evolves over time, too, for different folks. What they value. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Because it's not the same at every phase in our life. You know, it's like I think as well, like I think that there was a phase, you know, of my life where external things were valuable to me. And then you get to an age where like, I kind of don't care what people think about me anymore.

6:55And so there's that external kind of aspect of a luxury brand that we want to be associated with. And then there's the internal or the internal, right, where this makes me feel like this affects my internal emotions, regardless, even if nobody sees me. And that you described exactly luxury marketing, because it's not so much about the other person. You know, as I told my Cartier story, I'm not talking about it. I don't care that anybody knows I'm wearing Cartier. I bought it because it said I've reached this point. I used to sell this watch and now I can afford to buy this watch on my own. So that's its meaning for me.

7:32For you, you just hit it on the nail. Now, when I came into the watch industry initially, it was all about Rolex. So that's all I knew. And, you know, this is where I talk smack about Rolex. But I also say that if Rolex were to offer me a job, I would take it because it's the easiest job in the world for me because they've done such an amazing job already with their marketing. Of all my complaints about Rolex, I bow down to them for their marketing efforts because they have the world convinced that they are the top of the line watch. So usually when people are coming into the watch industry, they're asking me about Rolex because Rolex has done a great job.

8:09But then when you, as you said, as you get older, and this is where it comes into really feeding into what the customer likes. With me, Jaeger Le Couture became one of my favorite brands because of their first watch I put on was their, it's called Perpetual Calendar, which it tells time and every four years the watch will automatically adjust itself for leap years. So it knows leap years. And what was fascinating to me is it's doing this without a battery. how how does it know this without a battery right it hasn't there's another one that has that has um the the time phases of um of different countries all of this stuff is done without a battery and then there's the mean oh my god the minute repeaters there's one by gerard perigol called opera which guns out um uh beethoven's eighth symphony with every hour so it's it's these intricate details so the the people who can become passionate the people who leave rolex and say, okay, let me focus on something that's meaningful to me.

9:17And for me, meaningful is being, is that intricate detail to know that I'm holding a piece of work, a piece of art. I don't care what anybody else thinks, but this, this is meaning to me. This is worth it to me to own something so valuable, so well thought out. How can that principle apply to other business owners and leaders that are offering, say they're offering professional services. Maybe it's not even a, a thing, an item that they're selling, but they're selling themselves. What could they learn from the luxury market, luxury watch market in particular? Well, ultimately it comes down to listening to your customer.

9:58So I'll give you an example. One of the other many things I do, and I'm very happy to have joined this company, this organization called the Venture Mentoring Team. We are an organization of, I don't know know how many, but really brilliant executives who have reached a space in their life that they're now volunteered a time to work with other people for free. So I was in part of my training session and there's a 20-hour certification process. It's really intricate, but you get a good quality of people. So we were doing a case study on a VMT mentee and they showed us her video because you have to do a video in order to be considered for the mentorship program.

10:39They showed us a video and I'm listening to what she's saying. And at the end of the video, the teacher, the instructor for this training was like, okay, what did, what did you guys get from her? I said, well, everybody had all these different opinions. I said, well, you know what? From what I'm hearing from her, it sounds like she wants to serve. So the fact that she's leading, because she said those words, I want to serve. And so that's where we have to start focusing on what she wants to do. And the teacher said to me, it's like, oh my God, Lillian, we worked with her for three years and it took us a good year and a half for us to get that that's what she was leading with, that her heart is in serving.

11:15So when you know your heart is in serving, then this is where we have to create your strategy based on making sure your customers know that this is what you want to do. So it always comes down to listening to what people are telling you. If you're sitting in front of a potential client right now, this is what I always do. I will just shut up and listen and I will give them time. I had this one client, one of my largest clients with a huge six-figure retainer that came from it. And it was between me and a significantly much larger agency. That much larger agency, they gave him 30 minutes of their time and they let him go.

11:49I let this man talk for two hours. I let him talk for two hours, telling me all his hopes and his dreams and blah, blah, blah. And by the end, he realized that I was the right one for him because I was listening to him and what he wanted to accomplish. And as I was listening, I was putting together a roadmap of how we're going to get you to where you want to be. And that's often the challenges that I find, especially when I'm usually the PR person that gets brought in after other PR people have failed. So I'm usually the one that's like, okay, I need to deal with your wounds and you're being gun-shy and all that.

12:24And no, I'm sorry, I can't lower my fees for you just because you had a bad experience. But I'm going to tell you that after me, you will never have a bad experience again. And so I go through the process of just listening. And I go through this long onboarding period with them to really understand what it is their pain points are. And then I create a strategy around it. And that is what I'd offer to your listeners as well. It comes down to listening. I know it sounds very simple, but as simple as it is, you would be surprised at how many people don't do it. What other trends are you observing in in luxury marketing, luxury PR?

12:59Are there anything, like if we look at the year ahead, is there anything that's different, innovative, new that you think that maybe didn't exist five years ago? So when I got into luxury, there was always this thing like, oh, we need to be snooty. We need to be snooty and we need to keep people away and be exclusive. And I always have this argument, and it's all over my writing, luxury is not about exclusivity. It's about how you make people feel. And I think a lot of brands are starting to come to understand that, that no, you need to make them feel special. When somebody walks through your door, regardless of whether or not you think they have money or not, you need to make them feel special.

13:41And that wasn't there before. When I was at Tourneau, which is now 20 years and I'm aging myself, I remember one of my largest sales was a$40 ,000 watch. The guy came in in jeans and sneakers and everybody ignored him, except for me. I didn't ignore him because it's like, okay, you're coming in here. You don't look like you have the money, but I'm not going to second guess. I'm just going to wait and see what happens. And then I made the sale and everybody was shocked because they were expecting to be a certain way. Luxury can't be about being snooty anymore. It has to be about seducing the customer, about making them want to learn about us.

14:20And that's where a lot more brands are going to. So some of the work I do with my clients is we talk about the customer journey. The customer journey is huge because there's different layers of it that goes from just, yes, the customer's now on your website, but how are you going to keep them on your website? And how are you going to eventually get them to buy? So there are many layers of it. There's Obviously, it's going to be the visuals of it. And I must refer back to the video I watched of you prior to this. There is on my website. I'm sorry, not on the Lillian Raji website, but the pradvisor.com website, which is where I do a lot of my giveaways and a lot of the content that I share is on pradvisor.com.

15:06But I did something called the golden pillars of e-commerce website design that goes through the process of what you need on your website in order to make sure you get your customers to come and to buy from you. So part of that is once you have the visuals in place, now you need to capture them with the newsletter. And one of the things with the newsletters, one of the things that frustrates me, and this is going to be a topic for one of my upcoming articles for National Jeweler. One of the things that frustrates me with newsletters that people really should get away from is putting out a newsletter that's just selling product.

15:38You should be offering value with every newsletter. Yes, you want to send out something that sells, but offer me some value. Tell me a story about your product. Tell me why, if you are, again, a jury designer, tell me what inspiration went behind your designing the jury. If you are a consultant, tell me the challenges that you face in starting your business, because that's one of the conversations I often have with with clients, with my consulting clients, not necessarily my care clients, is trying to explain to them that, look, you're having these challenges, but guess what? I have them too. Everybody has these challenges.

16:17And it's always good for them to know. One of my recent VMT calls, the mentoring calls, was this woman. She had, I'm sure everybody would recognize this mistake. I made it, everyone makes it. She had hired a new business development person to try and sell her company. And so she had built her company to a certain level by doing, you know, the usual suspects, right? The, the networking, the referrals, all, all the things that usually get us off the ground. And then she had reached this point where she's like, okay, I'm in this position now, now I need to hire somebody to go do the business development for me and all that.

16:54And I had to And so the call, I spent like 20 minutes like looking at the time, like I need to get off this call because all she was doing was just crying. Like, oh, my God, I did this. I'm like, all right, stop. All right. We need to redirect your mind. Yes, you made a mistake. But the thing is, no one's going to be as passionate about your company as you are. Always true. Yes. So you hiring somebody else to do new business development, that's why I failed. until you get to a certain size, which is very far away, you're going to have to be the one that does the new business development. And I know people hate hearing this, like, oh my God, but I have this hat, I have the marketing hat, I have the operation, but it doesn't matter.

17:35Marketing operations, none of that matters if you don't have clients coming in. So being able, when you, so when you, when you have your newsletters, being able to tell these stories and let people know, like, look, you're having these problems, but hey, you're not the only one. It's not your fault. And I think that's the biggest thing entrepreneurs really need to understand and to know and to hear. You've made this mistake. You're not the only one that's made this mistake. And here's an example of how I've made the mistake or how a client has made this mistake or at any level of understanding of like, look, what you're going through is normal.

18:08Don't blame yourself. Take your licks, learn your lesson and keep moving. Yeah. All right. So your website L-M-R-P-R. Lillian, I know you've got some resources. You're also a good follow on LinkedIn. But what would you recommend that folks do after hearing our conversation if they'd like to learn more about luxury PR, whether or not they may or may not be ready for a conversation with you? Where would you recommend they go? Honestly, I'd send people to my thepradvisor.com website because that's where I put a lot of my content. find me on LinkedIn is always the next thing because I my column for Forbes is called the pursuit of luxury so I end up writing a lot of marketing strategy on my Forbes column which is because it's part of the CMO network so my audience is a bunch of CMOs my recent articles are more focused on the Olympics but I have a new series coming up which I'm excited about called how to succeed in watches if your name isn't roulettes.

19:12So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm featuring a bunch of brands that are, um, are under the radar, but very high quality and worth the price points. So LinkedIn is where I would say, find me first. Um, because I, I share everything on there, but if you want more, more specific content, the PR advisor.com is where it's really where my blog lives. It's where, um, I update weekly with KPI metrics. I I'm doing a series on KPI metrics that I think a lot of companies really need to know, particularly smaller companies, because they don't know how to measure the results of all the marketing that they're doing. Yeah.

19:49Lillian Raji, again, you're the president of Lillian Raji Agency website, LMRPR. Lillian, it's been great to have you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Josh.

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