Last night was the second to last class for the course that I designed and teach at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business Fast Track MBA Program. As I’ve mentioned before the class is titled, “Luxury Marketing” and for the most part I use luxury marketing as a continued case study of precision- guided niche marketing. In the design of the course, I bring in guest speakers from a variety of marketing and sales disciplines. The speakers are all acknowledged and highly credentialed experts in the field. They are also close friends and professional associates of mine.

In prior classes, I was fortunate to have Mark Tilghman, President of JDA USAspeak on the topic of media planning in a very tightly targeted marketing strategy. I’ve also had Todd Spangler, Sales Director for Hawker Beechcraft Corporation present a case study on sales and marketing in the Private Jet sector. Both speakers did an outstanding job and really added an element of practical expertise to the course’s content.

In last night’s class my lecture was centered on Brand Extensions, the risks and mitigating factors when luxury brands try new things. I cited several examples including several hospitality projects for which I played a role in the marketing strategy. Fortunately the highlight of the evening was not my lecture but rather my guest speaker, Mr. Campion Platt.

Campion is an extraordinary professional. Not only is he celebrated as one of the Architectural Digest Top 100 Designers but he is an absolute marketing machine for his luxury brand. Campion spoke for nearly 90 minutes on his career, his work and his book, Made to Order. Of course one of the highlights of his exceptional talk was his reference to his absolutely awesome website (A FORMO product). Campion highlighted the brand extension in his own firm and his extensions into furniture, textiles and now publishing. He used several excellent examples of very precise marketing and how this leads to his “made to order” or bespoke approach on every project. Truly an extraordinary evening for which I am very grateful to Campion.

Campion Platt