We just made it through a record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but that's just the beginning. It's that time of year when retailers across the country go into hyper-sales mode to push brands in front of shoppers with open wallets. When consumers are conditioned to expect discounts and deals, we've got to look at how luxury brands stay authentic when taking on the holiday shopping season. While 2016 may not be particularly different than years past, there's something refreshing about luxury brands that keep discounts off the table, staying true to an original brand, and innovating their approach to ...

The first thing a lot of people think about when they hear about customer collaboration and co-creation is, "That's great. But I work in a very complex industry. There's no way this will ever work for me." However, Harley-Davidson, BMW and Ducati have all found success in running customer collaboration programs. Personal transportation is a lifestyle-intensive market segment in the same way that clothing, cosmetics or electronics are. They help people define who they are and show that to the world around them. What we can learn from these leading companies can be extrapolated to other luxury goods industries to ...

I was talking to a friend the other day about her daughter's holiday wish list. A nice young girl from a nice family, not ostentatious at all. And yet, there at the top of her list were items from high-end brands like Lululemon, Michael Kors, David Yurman. Standard brands we associate with young, teenage girls, right? Wrong.

The fourth quarter is always the busiest time for consumer marketers. They spend more on media and, in theory, they drive more money through increased holiday sales. This may result in high ROI, but in today's fractured media landscape, a marketer needs to go much further to better understand how each channel affected the affluent consumer's path to conversion. There's no better time to remember that proper marketing analysis requires an attribution strategy, and marketers who want to do attribution correctly need to get involved early in the process, building their quarterly strategies with robust post-campaign attribution in mind.

This month's column builds upon last month's column, "If You Think All Millionaires Are The Same, Think Again," and delivers our current insights about how millionaires differ from the average American in the way they communicate with other consumers and how they view and hear marketers' messages and advertising. The wealthy, defined for this column as America's millionaires with personal liquid assets of $1 million or more, differ from the average American, and they differ from each other as well, especially when you look at them across generations.

In case you haven't noticed, the times they are a-changin', wreaking havoc on many businesses. In particular, the jewelry industry is being hit especially hard. To help jewelers find ways to adapt to these changes, we met with several of them from across the U.S. recently to discuss strategy.

In the past 10 years, new forms of digital media have empowered brands more than ever to build two-way relationships with their clients and fans. When people talk about their favorite brands, products and services, it can often sound like they're reminiscing about an old friend, or describing a family member. Brands, especially those in the luxury sector, need to realize this and begin envisioning the relationships they build with their clients as social, and not only commercial. What does this mean for brands today?

Recently, the concept of the HENRY - High Earner, Not Rich Yet - has become very popular with marketers, especially those looking for audiences with the potential for high discretionary spending. Advertisers looking to reach consumers on their way toward affluence have likely viewed this audience as the perfect target for their advertising campaigns. In some respects, they'd be correct, as HENRYs represent consumers who likely meet many of the qualifications for affluence.

Affluence marketers define their targets in many different ways (for example, by income, wealth, generation, buying habits, gender, or attitudinally). We believe that affluence and wealth are in the eyes of consumers and marketers. This column provides selected insights regarding wealthy American consumers (18 or older) in total and among adults with personal liquid assets of $1 million or more segmented by generation. Based on our survey and on Bureau of the Census statistics, we estimate there are 19 million millionaires as defined by their personal liquid assets.

Millennial shoppers wield an ever-increasing share of the dollars that are spent in the luxury market. Professionals have been looking for new ways to market their brands to these elusive customers in the hope of growing their customer base - all while conserving the exclusivity and prestige of their brands. How can luxury brands continue to build intimate relationships with their clients and brand ambassadors as they always have, but at a scale that generates a healthier bottom line?