SelfBrand Strategy VIII. The Elitist

Paris Hilton

The Elitist
Paris Hilton

Being hard to get and setting a high price on your services or products are good strategies for standing out and garnering business. Creating faux scarcity is often a compelling part of this brand strategy. Look at the way luxury goods manufacturers produce a very limited run of hot new handbags.

For many people, high price equates with superiority. It seems obvious that $400-an-hour consultants must be better than $100-an-hour consultants (or lawyers or doctors or creative directors). How else could they charge that much? And the CEO who is paid $20 million must be better than the one who is paid a mere $1 million.

The Elitist Personality

Louis Vuitton

The Elitist Brand

For many people, high price equates with superiority. As an elitist, you value your worth and abilities and consequently set a higher price for your services and if you are a professional or entrepreneur, and seek higher paying jobs at companies. Often you feel superior to others and feel that you deserve the best things in life. You have high self-esteem and you want others to appreciate your value. You like luxury and maintain a high standard of living. You like to see yourself as special, hard to get and in demand. Sometimes you create the elusion that you're more in a demand than is the case to bolster your elitist image. The key ingredient in the Elitist mindset is an unwavering belief in your superiority – that you are indeed an elite product that is hard to get and worth it.

Most of the time you:

  • Pay a lot of attention to how you look
  • Enjoy a high-quality lifestyle

But sometimes you:

  • Over-indulge yourself
  • Can get greedy and materialistic

Generally people see you as:

  • A bit of a snob
  • Someone who does what they please
  • Interested in your social class

But you can:

  • Ignore rules and think they don't apply to you
  • Feel superior to others
  • Be too wild

How to Execute the Elitist Strategy

See You Are a Brand, p. 65 - 67 for ideas, examples and exercises on how to execute the elitist strategy. You must be able to fill in the blank in the statement:

Elitist Positioning: I'm hard to get, expensive and worth it because __________.