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The concept of aesthetic value is not usually associated with financial value. Metrics and analytics cannot measure creativity, style and taste. But aesthetic intelligence is a critical element in luxury business strategy. It can increase or decrease the overall value of a company.
aesthetic intelligence in business is about surprising and improving customers’ experience with the brand. Therefore, improving your aesthetic judgment and skills can help you win affluent customers.
Awakening Your Aesthetic Skills
If practice leads to polishing, aesthetic skills can be awakened and learned. Aesthetic intelligence is being able to judge the quality of not just a product or service, but the quality of everything customers experience when they interact with the brand.
Applying aesthetic judgment means putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers and articulating how they experience every interaction they have with the brand. This skill also requires understanding and interpreting feelings evoked by a product or experience.
The ability to engage all five senses and deliver products that are a pleasure to buy and consume add to the company’s value. The lack of this ability means detracting from the overall value of the company.
That’s how important it is to awaken your aesthetic skills and dive deep into aesthetic learning. It takes effort to nurture this other type of intelligence, and even if you are naturally gifted, you must continue to redefine your skills.
Related: Marketing to a High-End Consumer, Using the Luxury Strategy
Aesthetic learning for the longevity of the brand
Learning how to notice sensory elements in consumer responses helps improve products and brand longevity. Luxury brands that know how to balance innovation and legacy, and their products are the result of aesthetic learning. They take the time to understand which aspects of their legacy are still relevant and which aspects are simply part of their past. The essence of their aesthetic intelligence lies in the editorial command they possess.
Non-luxury sectors that are more focused on scale, efficiency and innovation often reject their aesthetic intelligence. They see no business value in it. This misunderstanding has sometimes led to the undermining of both financial and consumer value and ultimately shortened brand life.
Related: 6 Key Factors in Attracting High-Level Customers
Building aesthetic skills
Modern consumers are looking for products that help them reconnect with nature and turn even the most mundane tasks into experiences. By strengthening your aesthetic skills, you are better able to express depth and meaning in your products and appeal to the humanity of customers.
Set the intention to reconnect with your natural senses. Just rational observation isn’t enough if you aspire to become a leader who truly understands, appreciates and cares about the company’s value proposition.
To reconnect with natural senses, you have to adapt to the environment. The first step in building aesthetic skills is understanding how the natural senses work, which means developing a higher consciousness. Shift your focus to how people connect to places, communities, nature, etc., and how they respond to different stimuli.
The second step is to interpret the emotional responses to sensory stimuli that you have observed. You want to form an original aesthetic position, frame or ideal.
The next step is to articulate how to express that aesthetic ideal for your brand. Provide clear instructions to your team on the aesthetic ideal and how to implement it. Ultimately, you want to put together a variety of aesthetic ideals to integrate into your organization and brand.
The sound and shape of good taste
When building retail and digital experiences, luxury brands rely on the basic language of the five senses to enhance a brand’s codes, build market share, win customer loyalty and create lasting value for the business. As clear and visible brand identifiers, codes build over time and are rarely, if ever, changed.
To engage people’s senses and take your brand to the next level, you must first understand your brand codes and how the five senses can help refine them and grab consumer attention.
Explore your company’s archives to mine your brand’s codes. Codes connect past and present and project the brand into the future. They are guidelines and should permeate all products and experiences with a spirit of consistency and quality.
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Main takeaway
Developing your aesthetic skills will help you discover the changing aspirations and desires of your customers and come up with ideas that cannot be realized with product design alone. The language of the five senses can help you improve your brand’s codes and forge a lasting emotional connection with your customers.