Breaking anti-laws

Lexus: In the driving seat
Lexus: In the driving seat

I was interested in your cover story on luxury brands (MW 23 July) and the adoption of the 18 laws of anti-marketing in the car market.

Lexus is legendary in its ability to respond to customer feedback – at the microlevel in the excellence of its customer service, and at the macrolevel with its product planning. The fact that it is one of the top three brands in the US is no mistake – it got there through a relentless attention to what its customers wanted, the features and design of its products, its reliability, and its customer service practice.

In fact, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have had to step up their customer service game to avoid being eclipsed by Lexus. This is an example of listening to customer feedback and “interpreting” it in a branded way, in the product and in the customer experience. This would seem to countervail some of the “wisdom” of the “anti-laws”.

As for Jaguar, its new product is of equal or better quality to anything on the market right now. Jaguar won the JD Power sales satisfaction survey last year, thanks to the excellence of its dealer network and its mechanical and manufacturing quality. The new XJ delivers present-day customer needs instead of feeding an old view of what constitutes “British luxury”.

The result offers the design leadership of the “anti-laws” while accommodating the demands of the customer. No-one could call the XJ anything other than a masterfully executed luxury product – it has the highest level of customisation to date in a Jaguar. In short, it blends vision and customer need.

Rules, and anti-rules, were made to be broken. In luxury, and in other endeavours of life.

Steve Grant
Global planning director
Euro RSCG Luxe

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