Daniel Langer is the founder and CEO of consulting firm Équité During a recent discussion about an upcoming brand activation at one of the world's most prominent Michelin-starred restaurants, something revealing occurred.
Despite the prestige of the opportunity and the alignment with a global luxury brand, the restaurant team hesitated. Their reason: they did not want to change anything about the client experience.
“Our guests already love it,” they said.
Managing luxury brands
This mindset, while understandable, points to a dangerous comfort zone that too many in luxury fall into. When excellence becomes static, it stops being excellent.
And when experiences no longer surprise, they lose their emotional appeal. In today’s ultra-competitive and expectation-saturated luxury landscape, staying still is falling behind.
Consequently, I have often called the art of delivering luxury the perpetual management of surprise. Importantly, it is only a surprise when something unexpected happens.
That is why the 4Es of the luxury framework I developed are so critical to managing luxury brands: the 4Es are experience, emotion, exclusivity and engagement. Managing each of the 4Es must become like a second skin within an organization.
A lens through which every client interaction is reimagined. Let us start with experience.
Revisiting the 4E framework
Luxury today is not defined by opulence or other tangible differentiators, but more broadly by intentionality. It is intrinsic and what is considered luxury depends on an individual lens.
Every moment should spark wonder. A restaurant may believe its current experience is perfect.
But perfection should not be static. It should be alive, responsive and open to reinterpretation.
That is what today’s most discerning clients expect.
Emotion is what makes the experience stick. In luxury, the goal is to move, to touch the hearts of people.
The moment a guest feels seen, surprised or emotionally drawn in is when the magic happens. Without emotion, even the most flawless service becomes forgettable.
With it, even subtle gestures become unforgettable. Exclusivity is no longer about spectacular spaces, beautiful design and velvet ropes.
All of these are important, but in luxury, they are a given. Rather, exclusivity is about access to meaning and being at the center of attention.
Clients want to feel that something is just for them. This could be a tailored pairing.
A story shared only with a select few. A detail is hidden in plain sight.
Exclusivity is not about what others cannot have. In today’s world, it is about what only you can give in that moment relevant for them.
And then there is Engagement, perhaps the most underestimated dimension. I love this Chinese proverb that summarizes it better than anything else: “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.”
Surprise and delight
Engagement means empathy. It means presence.
It means that the client does not just receive attention but becomes part of it. When eyes, ears and intentions are fully attuned to the individual, that is engagement.
It is what separates service from luxury. And it is what today’s clients, particularly the next generation, are demanding.
Surprise and delight are the lifeblood of desire. In an age where any product can be copied or easily imitated, scaled and digitized, the human moments are what set true luxury apart.
Especially when they are crafted with care and infused with emotion. Which brings us back to the restaurant example that inspired me to write this.
Yes, their guests may love what they already do. But do those guests leave transformed?
Do they talk about the experience for weeks or months? Do they feel something they have never felt before?
That is the bar. And for luxury brands, anything less is no longer enough.
Luxury brands must challenge even their most established environments to go further. This requires rethinking what engagement truly means.
Surprise with intent. Delight with purpose.
In a world of rising expectations, only the unexpected creates lasting value.
Luxury Unfiltered is a weekly column by Daniel Langer. He is the CEO of Équité, a global luxury strategy and creative brand activation firm, where he is the advisor to some of the most iconic luxury brands. He is recognized as a global top-five luxury key opinion leader. He serves as the executive professor of luxury strategy and pricing at Pepperdine University in Malibu and as a professor of luxury at New York University, New York. Dr. Langer has authored best-selling books on luxury management in English and Chinese and is a respected global keynote speaker.
Dr. Langer conducts masterclass management training on various luxury topics around the world. As a luxury expert featured on Bloomberg TV, Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, The Economist and others, Mr. Langer holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in luxury management and has received education from Harvard Business School. Follow him on LinkedIn and Instagram, and listen to his Future of Luxury Podcast.