How To Build A Luxury Marketer
Assembly Instructions For The Skills Nobody Teaches You
Model: Luxury Marketer v1.0
Difficulty: Surprisingly difficult.
Estimated Assembly Time: 10-20 years.
Tools Required:
Curiosity
Humility
Patience
Thick skin
Good coffee
Warning: Results may vary. Missing parts, existential crises, and stakeholder misalignment are considered normal.
Over the last twenty years, I’ve worked with luxury brands, opened hotels, launched concepts, managed teams, made good decisions, made terrible decisions, and sat through more meetings than any human should reasonably endure.
One thing I’ve learned is that most marketers spend years learning tactics and almost no time learning the skills that actually matter.
Nobody gives you the manual.
So here it is.
I don´t pretend to have all the answers, I’ve just made enough mistakes to know where some of the pitfalls are.
PART 1: STRATEGIC THINKING
Purpose:
Allows the user to identify where they are trying to go before running enthusiastically in the wrong direction.
Assembly Instructions:
Define the objective.
Define what success looks like.
Work backwards.
Resist the temptation to open PowerPoint immediately.
Common Mistake:
Confusing activity with progress.
Pro Tip:
The best strategists spend more time defining the problem than discussing the solution.
PART 2: COMMERCIAL ACUMEN
Purpose:
Helps marketers understand that businesses are not powered by impressions and engagement rates.
Assembly Instructions:
Learn how the company makes money.
Learn how the asset creates value.
Spend time with Finance.
Accept that spreadsheets are part of adulthood.
Common Mistake:
Believing marketing exists independently from commercial performance.
Pro Tip:
The P&L is often the most honest marketing document in the building.
PART 3: PATTERN RECOGNITION
Purpose:
Transforms random observations into useful insights.
Assembly Instructions:
Read constantly.
Leave your industry.
Study culture.
Connect dots others ignore.
Common Mistake:
Calling something intuition before doing the work.
Pro Tip:
What looks like instinct is usually accumulated observation.
PART 4: TASTE
Purpose:
Prevents average work from being approved.
Assembly Instructions:
Consume exceptional work.
Raise your standards.
Repeat.
Common Mistake:
Mistaking trends for quality.
Pro Tip:
Taste isn’t elitism.
Taste is judgment.
PART 5: WRITING
Purpose:
Converts thoughts into something other humans can understand.
Assembly Instructions:
Write.
Write again.
Remove half the words.
Repeat.
Common Mistake:
Using complexity to hide unclear thinking.
Pro Tip:
Good writing is clear thinking in visible form.
PART 6: CURIOSITY
Purpose:
Keeps the operating system updated.
Assembly Instructions:
Ask questions.
Ask better questions.
Assume you know less than you think.
Common Mistake:
Believing experience and curiosity are interchangeable.
Pro Tip:
The day you think you’ve figured it all out is usually the day you start becoming irrelevant.
PART 7: STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Purpose:
Allows multiple humans with conflicting objectives to occupy the same room without violence.
Assembly Instructions:
Understand incentives.
Listen.
Align.
Repeat.
Common Mistake:
Trying to win arguments instead of building consensus.
Pro Tip:
Most marketing problems are actually people problems.
PART 8: RESILIENCE
Purpose:
Protects users from inevitable disappointment.
Assembly Instructions:
Fail.
Learn.
Continue.
Common Mistake:
Assuming successful people fail less.
Pro Tip:
Successful people simply recover faster.
PART 9: CULTURAL AWARENESS
Purpose:
Improves the ability to see where attention is moving before everyone else does.
Assembly Instructions:
Observe people.
Leave LinkedIn occasionally.
Pay attention.
Common Mistake:
Mistaking trends for culture.
Pro Tip:
Culture always arrives before the report.
PART 10: SELF-AWARENESS
Purpose:
The least discussed and arguably most important component.
Assembly Instructions:
Understand your strengths.
Understand your weaknesses.
Understand the stories you tell yourself.
Common Mistake:
Thinking professional growth and personal growth are separate things.
Pro Tip:
Every strategy is shaped by the person creating it.
TROUBLESHOOTING
“My campaigns aren’t working.”
Check strategy.
“My team lacks direction.”
Check clarity.
“My stakeholders disagree.”
Check alignment.
“My content feels generic.”
Check culture.
“I don’t know what to do next.”
Go back to the objective.
–Yamil Errasti / Founder
And yes, this was probably written faster than it should have been with the help of ChatGPT.
