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Why are family offices, private banks, and concierge companies of interest to luxury brands?

In the last ten years, there’s been a huge rise in wealth amongst the wealthy. If we break this down by wealth category:

UHNWI – 1,329 additional individuals, that’s nearly a 100% increase
HNWI – 8 million additional individuals – a 30% increase
Wealthy – around a 67% increase in the number of individuals in this category

This acceleration of wealth has led to an increase in support services to help structure and maintain this sector as well as make them more wealthy and comfortable.

This has given an expansion to different service providers – family office, wealth management and private banks, and concierge services.

These services provide ease to the UHNW and HNW or families so they can enjoy their lives without worrying about some of the details needed in running a large estate. Or indeed, to give them access to exclusivity and ‘money can’t buy’ experiences.

Why is this interesting? Because we often look at marketing to the luxury sector through the lens of what we know about the direct wealthy individuals: their hobbies, interests, leisure activities, and locations to name a few.

But we must think smarter about these different cohorts. As their wealth increases, as does their desire for greater anonymity. This often means they are one step removed from our marketing efforts, instead relying on their support team to make decisions on their behalf.

So, who are these support teams?

Within the HNW and UHNW categories, you’ll find two main types of support team: private banks and family offices.

Private banks are typically owned and operated by a financial institution. As such, a family office and a private bank are both wealth management firms, but there are some key differences between the two.

END-TO-END MANAGEMENT ACROSS ALL MAJOR PLATFORMS

A family office is a private wealth management firm that provides a wide range of financial and non-financial services to Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) families. UHNW families are typically defined as those with a net worth of at least $30 million.
Family offices are typically owned and operated by the family whose wealth they manage.
Family offices provide a variety of services, including investment management, estate planning, tax planning, philanthropic planning, and lifestyle management.

BESPOKE SOCIAL MEDIA SOLUTIONS

A private bank is a financial institution that provides a variety of banking and investment services to High Net Worth (HNW) individuals and families. It’s a commercial bank or investment bank. HNW individuals and families are typically defined as those with a net worth of at least $1 million.
Private banks offer a variety of services, including investment management, estate planning, tax planning, and lending.

LUXURY SOCIAL BOOSTING

Client base: Family offices typically serve UHNW families, while private banks serve HNW individuals and families.
Ownership: Family offices are typically owned and operated by the family whose wealth they manage, while private banks are typically owned and operated by a financial institution.
Services: Family offices offer a wider range of services than private banks, including non-financial services, such as lifestyle management.

However, both family office and private banks offer concierge services, either directly to their clients or through specialist companies such as Townhouse, which provide high-end, bespoke services.

LUXURY BRAND AMBASSADORS

Luxury brand ambassadors are often split into two tribes:

Firstly, your own team. We work with brands to upskill their team to become effective luxury brand ambassadors online.

They are the heart of what your business is about and can dramatically increase mentions and follows, as well as post lucrative content around broader brand activity.

This means you end up with a whole company of people posting high quality content that will raise your brand awareness on channels like LinkedIn and Instagram.

We often work with our clients’ HR team to build this type of activity into PDP programmes and get teams to work towards rewards schemes based on the content they create. A win for luxury brands but also a win for your team as they increase their own personas online.

Secondly, flagship celebrities. Working with them, and using their influence and presence to reach new audiences. These ambassadors have large reach and strong influence on social channels and we can look to harness this on behalf of your brand.

Often these programmes are supported by wider smaller influencers but with a key celebrity or star influencer at the forefront of the campaign.

Marketing your luxury brand to HNW/UHNW individuals

Knowing that these wealth brackets are expanding and that the super wealthy demand security and privacy, gives us an opportunity to connect business together through these intermediaries.

Where traditional marketing campaigns promote luxury goods and services directly to the consumer, we must also consider how to connect your luxury brand with the wider support team.

Overall there are around 10,000 private banks globally
There are around 1,500 family offices
While we don’t have hard numbers on concierge companies, we know there are many thousands of them throughout Europe and North America