The world of Tiffany & Co. through a young girl's eyes at Vision & Virtuosity Exhibition
Tiffany & Co. is an example of a brand that has marketed itself excellently. It has successfully married selective concepts to its name so when you think of ‘Tiffany’ you instantly conjure up a certain set of images (blue box, love, engagement, New York etc). I’m starting with this because as a marketer I know what I’m buying into; I know the endless amount of meetings, projects and budgets that would have been put in motion over decades, for it to have reached the brand reputation and association it currently has. So much so, that even as I was wandering the exhibition reading the descriptors (yes I actually do read what is written) all I could think about was how some poor person (or groups of people) probably went backwards and forward editing this script to perfect it for display right here… because I too have been that poor person. As a marketer, I think Tiffany & co. and the exhibition at large, is very, very clever. As a female consumer however, I think Tiffany is pure magic.
My earliest memory of Tiffany is of its black and white photography advertising engagement rings, and some of those images were so powerful they are still with me today. It actually wasn’t the concept of marrying per se that stole my heart (I rarely ever thought about marriage if I could help it) but the actual creative direction. Even at a young age I loved the photography, the styling, the story.
Most of all, I loved the way the women were represented. I loved how all the women looked like grown ass women; stylish, elegant, sure of themselves. Even though those images were representing a woman being proposed to by a man, those women all looked like they were going places. I remember looking at those images and not thinking ‘I need to be with a man like that’, but thinking ‘I need to be a woman like that’. (I'll skip over the fact these women were all Caucasian with the exact same look.)
Even back then I wasn’t naive; I wasn’t buying into the ‘love is a fairytale’ mantra; I knew love and relationships were hard work. However, those images were capturing a moment in time, reflecting when maybe all that hard work was paying off (maybe?). They were kindling buried desire, which smart and strategic marketing does.
Every now and then I followed the world of Tiffany’s from voluntarily watching their adverts, to binge watching their YouTube videos to even reading interviews of their leadership team. Notice how I haven’t even once mentioned their jewellery. Every successful brand knows it is not the product that sells itself (per se) but the world you create around it and entice people to be part of. There are numerous haute joaillerie, and yet not all of them can command attention and birth a world the way Tiffany has.
Another element which Tiffany often plays on is the love for a city. Whilst New York has a notorious reputation, you needn’t have to be from a city at all to be able to relate or understand the psychology behind this. Having love for a place really comes down to how you see it and relate to it (it was Proust who famously said ‘the real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes’). Not everyone is fortunate enough to travel or to live somewhere eventful or beautiful. Nor should you have to. A love for a place comes from intertwining your story and identity to it, from it, even beyond it. Like with most things, it’s about selectively choosing what to let in and to see the best of something.
The Tiffany & Co. exhibition that has taken over London’s Saatchi Gallery this summer, is designed beautifully. It felt a little lacklustre due to how overcrowded it was (also why I wasn’t able to capture all the imagery I would have liked) but it was grand, immersive, multi-faceted and very well thought out.
Though I'm not a fan of glamourising the journey it takes to get to a happy ending, or a finished product, I can’t deny that indulging in some glamour can uplift the spirits and spark new motives to enable us to shape our own stories.
Art & Aesthetics
