What’s a lifestyle brand?

Wikipedia Definition

The wizard that is wikipedia says…”A lifestyle brand is a brand that attempts to embody the values and aspirations of a group or culture for purposes of marketing. 

A successful lifestyle speaks to the core identity of its prospective customers. Individuals each have their own sense of self, based on their background (e.g. ethnicity, social class, subculture, nationality, etc.). A lifestyle brand provides a powerful supplement to this core identity, by allowing the individual to publicly associate themselves with the brand.”

A lifestyle brand is like a magnet that attracts people with certain philosophies and lifestyles to buy the products that this brand promotes. Magnetic Marketing is the process of transforming brands into magnets that attract people with certain philosophies and lifestyles to buy the products that these brands promote.

Some examples

Lifestyle brands aren’t constrained to any particular sector and infact many companies would place into it’s own trading vertical/sector rather than the more personality trait that is the ‘lifestyle brand’ umbrella. Many lifestyle brands purposely relate to existing groups or cultures.

Some examples that I can think of off my head include…

Burton & Quicksilver (Retail)
Apple (Tech)
SMART (Auto)
Soulwax (Music)
STA Travel (Travel)

Certain brands such as Microsoft have tried to evolve themselves into lifestyle brands lately without much success in my honest opinion. I’m a PC…please. It lacks the genuine philiosphies of enbodying values and aspirations of its users and is trying to become a ‘lifestyle brand’ the wrong way around.

Lifestyle Marketing?

Consumer lifestyles are changing dynamically under social environmental influences. Lifestyle marketing aligns brands with consumer’s interests, needs, desires, and values. As businesses have grown to realise that their success is increasingly dependent upon an adequate knowledge of consumer behaviour, the importance of lifestyle market segmentation has increased steadily.

Companies must be able to interpret customer/product lifecycles and apply their “marketing machine” to successfully innovate around lifestyles and repackage existing offerings to fit the needs of new customers.