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Today's Hong Kong university student is likely to be tomorrow's luxury customer and their new values have to be understood.
Opinion
The View
by Peter Guy
The View
by Peter Guy

Occupy movement creates marketing nightmare for luxury brands

Today's student may be tomorrow's luxury customer, meaning brands need to rethink how they engage this new Hong Kong demographic

We will never be able to look at our students and young people in the same way again after the last three weeks of Occupy Central protests.

Exactly how Hong Kong has been changed will deeply affect the economy and businesses.

As in any civil and political war, everyone has been forced to choose sides. And while many citizens are hoping for Hong Kong to return to normal, it will be a new normal.

Thousands of these young protesters have altered the assumptions of a demographic that was previously thought to be blindly obedient to tycoons and authorities.

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel described that the "master and slave relationship" only existed because the slave allowed it. And it would only end when the slave, not the master, decided to end his or her enslavement.

For better or worse, the students have decided to reject the status quo and chart an unknown course. No longer shackled by the experience of their elders' Hong Kong refugee legacy, they want what they deserve. And they want it now - at internet, social media speed.

Occupy's yellow umbrella is the symbol used to galvanise people to the cause.

But there's no better symbol of the city's class struggle than its high society magazines, especially and .

In the pre-Occupy Hong Kong era, they embodied the city's unique, aspirational capitalism.

Today, they could soon become objects of contempt that seem irrelevant to what and who is important to this city. It will dramatically affect how luxury brands engage their next generation of customers.

Their monthly gallery represents people who are blithely detached from Hong Kong's crisis. They embody the lifestyles of the rich and aimless, people who embody the Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake attitude".

The wealthy featured in and seem to believe that only their wealth and power are critical to the future of Hong Kong; they are endlessly amused with themselves and oblivious to our crisis.

Sadly, they demonstrate what counts for success and plagues Hong Kong's oligarch economy - being born or married into money. Their vanity is impervious to the outside world. Their gargantuan egos, their petty jealousies, their catty feuds, their commitment to frivolity at all costs - this is Hong Kong high society at its most luridly monstrous, with lots of shopping.

Yet, these are the people that could become the enemy of the people in the class struggle that has broken out.

The youth of Hong Kong is now self-aware of what is truly important to its future livelihood and unlikely to be part of this social-climbing circus of envy.

Hong Kong's youth is the future of its middle class and their enlightened beliefs have created a marketing and demographic schism.

Hong Kong's rich are no longer heroes to be admired and emulated ... they are loathed

Next season's designer watch is not the only thing on their minds. New values are percolating through their own "peace-in" version of the "love-ins" of Woodstock and Glastonbury. The so-called spirit of high society now exudes the distinct scent of economic and political oppression.

Such a serious change in perception has serious implications for how luxury brands are marketed in Hong Kong.

Besides demonstrating how a series of organised protests could affect an entire city's economy, an openly fought, long-term class struggle doesn't make a hospitable home for luxury shopping.

Today's Hong Kong university student is likely to be tomorrow's luxury customer and their new values have to be understood. Prestigious brands from fashion to wealth management need to rethink how they engage this new demographic.

The demonstrations have also showed how social media has emerged as a supremely scalable force for precisely targeting and reaching the right audience.

Super serve your followers and ignore the rest and the result is that you will always possess a 100 per cent market share. That explains Occupy's marketing success.

Hong Kong's rich are no longer heroes to be admired and emulated. They are no longer feared or respected. Instead, they are loathed.

And that is an utterly dangerous proposition for brands that are trying to leverage their patronage for future followers.

or need to feature Joshua Wong on their covers as the most important new member of Hong Kong's elite and most exciting brand ambassador.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Luxury brands out of step in new world
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