RECESSION – F*#% it

I’ll start this post with an anecdote.   In a previous life, I was a Sales Manager for hotel rooms in South Lake Tahoe.  I interviewed for the same position twice, as I was passed up the first time around.  In the first round of interviews, I was asked what I would do for our client if a competitor hotel came in $10 less than me per night.  We were a 4 Star hotel, they were a 3 Star.  I didn’t put enough thought into the answer an immediately answered that if allowable by pricing guidelines, I’d match the competitor’s price.  That’s the wrong answer. 

As businesses operate in this recession, they will have to make choices about their brand and the price people will be paying for it.  Rolex sales are sure to drop.  Fewer people will fly first class.  We might not be requesting the top shelf spirits as much.  But, should a premium brand or service lower prices in order to maintain sales? 

Morgans Hotel Group doesn’t think so.  Owners of San Francisco’s Clift, L.A.’s Mondrian, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Vegas, and six other luxury properties, their “F*#% the Recession” campaign is aiming to directly tell the recession to, well, you know.  A website has been created with youtube videos and even a letter to the recession.  I wonder if that was a Detroit address or possibly office space in the New York Times building.

While the campaign looks appealing and is generating some buzz online, one can only wonder if it will work.  The sentiment of telling off the recession is kind of like yelling at the tv during a sports match.  Proceeding to support a company when one should maybe be saving their money, is akin to paining one’s face to yell at the tv during a sports match.  People are going to be making decisions in the coming months with their pocketbooks on their sleeves.  I just don’t think a campaign that forcefully tries to get people to spend money on luxury goods is prudent, or smart.  If it were me making decisions for these upper-end companies, I’d probably be saving some of those advertising dollars.

The Chief Marketing Officer of Morgans, Scott Williams, recently was quoted in the San Francisco Business Journal. 
“We want to give our guests permission to continue to have fun and to stay with us.  You can bury your head in the sand, discount your rooms, piss your brand away.  But we are a luxury brand and we will act like a luxury brand.  I’m going to look back at this recession and say ‘we didn’t just drop our pants.’” 

I think Williams makes a point here.  However, there is not really a need to create an illogical marketing campaign in order to maintain a luxury brand. 

Is it possible to that the vulgar campaign will scare people away?  I found this interesting quote from a First Lady of luxury, Coco Chanel:
“I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.”