Your Brand Doesn’t Need to be “Premium”… It Needs to be Desired.
Over the years, I’ve found myself having the same conversation with consumer brands over and over again. It usually happens in the start up stages, but it also pops up in established brands, too.
They’ll say, “we need to be accessible” and then in the same breath, “we also need to be premium.”
The problem is, those two ideas don’t always sit comfortably together when you’re building a brand. In fact, they usually pull in completely different directions.
“Premium” is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, usually with little understanding of what it actually means.
Most of the time, when brands say they want to be premium, what they actually mean is that they want their brand to look nice. What I keep reminding them is that premium is more than aesthetics, it’s ultimately a positioning decision.
A lot goes into premium positioning - design included - but the defining factor is ultimately a higher price point which creates a more exclusive customer base. In reality, “premium” signals that a brand isn’t accessible to everyone, and it’s that sense of exclusion that creates the perception of it being premium in the first place.
And yes, sometimes premium is exactly what certain brands are meant to be, but more often than not it’s an aesthetic aspiration that leads many brands astray. They try to sit somewhere in the middle, aiming to feel high-end while also appealing to the masses, resulting in a brand that floats in no man’s land.
So where does this fixation of being ‘premium’ come from?
At its core, and I hate to say it, it’s often tied to ego. Wanting your brand to feel elevated or above others is often more about how you want your brand to be perceived than what your customer actually needs or wants.
Letting go of that ego creates space to focus on what really matters: being genuinely useful, relevant, and wanted by the people your brand is actually targeting.
So when the question of being ‘more premium’ is inevitably brought up in strategy chats, I often challenge brands with what I feel is a more useful question.
Rather than “How do we make this brand feel premium?” I ask “How do we make this brand desired?”
This question shifts the goal posts.
Aiming for ‘desire’ challenges you to create something that genuinely resonates with the people it’s meant for.
The brands who drive desire create an immediate sense of recognition within their target audience, where someone encounters them and thinks, “oh yeah, this is for me.” That emotional connection is far more powerful than trying to look high-end.
That feeling of “this is for me” shows up in all sorts of ways:
Messaging when the customer feels like a brand is speaking to their specific situation rather than making broad claims that could apply to anyone
Design choices that feel intuitive, and recognise how that person actually lives (and spoiler alert, can still look great as well)
Details that reflect understanding of the customer’s mindset, whether that’s a frustration they’ve had for years, a habit they recognise in themselves, or a moment in their routine where the product naturally fits.
Take a busy mum who is cleaning up after kids all day desires a of bottle multi-purpose cleaner that her friends would envy like they do a Prada handbag? What she desires is a cleaner that makes her life easier - the one that works fast, is safe around kids and is easy to use one-handed.
Desirability isn’t about appearing superior or high-end. It’s about standing out to the right person as something that belongs in their world.
Because when you create something that a specific group of people genuinely cares about, you build stronger and more meaningful brand than any attempt at being “premium” ever could.
