Mere life is a luxury

In these five words above lies the conundrum of our Special topic.

Both luxury and travel are very broad concepts and are very hard to define. And yet they are incredibly important ... to all. Life itself, indeed. The two concepts that might seem at first glance non-essential are somehow the essence of enjoying life rather than enduring it.

To give the fuller quote from which the headline is drawn, here are Mark Twain’s words: “Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the sweetest music to the ear famishing for it.”

Put that way, everything may be seen as potentially luxury or travel as we pass through our lives. And, taken to absolute extremes, one person’s luxury adventure trip can seem close – and yet entirely different – to the horrific elements that make up another’s desperate journey from one country to another in search of a future, employment or refuge. Passages through life that are worlds apart and yet in the same world, using some of the same space and tools. ‘Travel’ and ‘luxury’ are shape-shifting concepts, calling up another dimension, when applied to the atoms and the hours of our days.

We often see the two concepts together, as in luxury travel, be it as transport or location or activity, or even the suitcases or suits we choose. But we also see them separately: as in luxury chocolates and travel essentials, where they start to mean something quite different.

Even when we try to reduce these two words to be simple descriptors – be it ‘comfort and style’ for luxury, or ‘long journey’ for travel – they wriggle free, refusing to be specific. What is style and what is long?

In Lürzer’s Archive’s categories, we may position travel and luxury as broad areas that range from the mundane and affordable (as in those chocolates and essentials mentioned before) to the most out-there of outside activities and the most extravagant of unnecessary expenditures.

They are two of the most teasingly challenging areas to build brands within. This is in part because they are über-labels for describing anything … cars, bags, watches, train and airline seats, water and wine, and so on. Just about everything can sit under these wrapper words.

That is, we might suggest, because both are forms of myth-making, similar to the building blocks of making any brand. They are all about belief systems and values, rather than actual things or places.

Travel™ and Luxury® might be mega brands under which so much else sits. We can wrap so much with them ... indeed, right now, many of you are perhaps doing that in creating the next brands, the next ads.

In this Special we aim to give you raw material, food for thought and perhaps even inspiration. We examined the recent deep archives of L[A] and pulled out some of the best luxury and travel ads. Then we juxtapose them over the following pages with a few rare words, short statements that are each a reduction of some of the finer things said about luxury and travel.

Et voilà! It’s for you to enjoy and just think about what luxury and travel might mean now and ahead. It can be anything and yet it will be something intensely personal ... like life. As Mr Twain said.

7

1 L[A] 1/2016, Brunner, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2 L[A] 2/2016, Porta, Santiago de Chile

3 L[A] 1/2017, George Patterson/Y&R, Melbourne

4 L[A] 3/2019, TBWA, Paris

5 L[A] 3/2022, The Newtons Laboratory, Athens

6 L[A] 1/2020, McCann, Santiago de Chile

7 L[A] 6/2014, Cranford Johnson, Little Rock, Arkansas

8 L[A] 4/2013, Amen, Montevideo

9 L[A] 3/2020, Lowe SSP3, Bogota

10 L[A] 3/2018, 360i, New York

11 L[A] 4/2016, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, São Paulo

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 3/2016, Creators Group Mac, Tokyo

2 L[A] 3+4/2021, adam&eveDDB, London

3 L[A] 6/2016, Gloryparis, Paris

4 L[A] 2/2013, Adopt, Brussels

5 L[A] 3/2013, Taku Satoh Design Office, Tokyo

6 L[A] 1/2015, McGarrah Jessee, Austin

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. This information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Is

1 L[A] 5/2013, Y&R, Berlin

2 L[A] 2/2013, TBWA, Copenhagen

3 L[A] 3/2018, Y&R, Madrid

4 L[A] 5/2013, Perfil 252, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

5 L[A] 2/2015, Xebec Communication, Pune, India

6 L[A] 4/2013, Y&R, Dubai

7 L[A] 5/2015, Mother, New York

8 L[A] 1/2013, Y&R, Zurich

9 L[A] 1/2016, Wieden+Kennedy, New York

10 L[A] 1/2014, Ogilvy & Mather, Copenhagen

11 L[A] 5/2013, Badillo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, San Juan, Puerto Rico

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 2/2014, Santo, Buenos Aires

2 L[A] 1/2017, VSA Partners, Chicago

3 L[A] 2/2022, BETC Etoile Rouge, Paris

4 L[A] 5/2016, Raguse Scheer, Cologne, Germany

5 L[A] 3/2013, Studio SC, São Paulo

6 L[A] 2/2013, David, Buenos Aires

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. This information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 1/2018, TBWA RAAD, Dubai

2 L[A] 5/2019, Greatest Common Factory, Austin

3 L[A] 1/2013, DDB&Co., Istanbul

4 L[A] 6/2018, Arnold Worldwide, Boston

5 L[A] 3/2014, Africa, São Paulo

6 L[A] 1/2019, DDB, Bogota

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 3+4/2021, Havas Worldwide, Prague

2 L[A] 6/2016, JWT, London

3 L[A] 3/2018, Humanseven, Puteaux, France

4 L[A] 3/2014, Y&R, Lima

5 L[A] 3+4/2020, Wien Nord + Now, Vienna

6 L[A] 6/2018, KesselsKramer, Amsterdam

7 L[A] 2/2013, Ogilvy & Mather, London

8 L[A] 1+2/2021, Designate Communications, Brighton, United Kingdom

9 L[A] 3/2015, KesselsKramer, Amsterdam

10 L[A] 4/2014, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, Johannesburg

11 L[A] 3/2013, Grey, London

12 L[A] 3/2022, KesselsKramer, London

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

A distant horizon is the ultimate wonder of the world.

1 L[A] 2/2016, TBWA\Frederick, Santiago de Chile

2 L[A] 3+4/2021, Publicis, Montreal

3 L[A] 6/2016, M&C Saatchi, Los Angeles

4 L[A] 6/2015, 433ag, Curitiba, Brazil

5 L[A] 1/2022, Isobar Dentsu Colombia, Bogota

6 L[A] 1/2016, Innova – All Around the Brand, São Paulo

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Illusions of luxury and travel are reshaped by

global politics.

1 L[A] 3/2014, Peter Lippmann

2 L[A] 1/2013, DDB&Co., Istanbul

3 L[A] 5/2021, Prada, in-house, Milan, Italy

4 L[A] 1/2019, DDB Latina Puerto Rico, G uaynabo

5 L[A] 4/2017, adam&eveDDB, London

6 L[A] 4/2019, Ogilvy & Mather, Mexico City

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Animals invite us to travel outside of ourselves, while reminding us of what it is to be human.

1 L[A] 2/2014, Porta, Santiago de Chile

2 L[A] 3/2016, White Rabbit, Budapest

3 L[A] 4/2015, Y&R, São Paulo

4 L[A] 4/2019, Propeg, Salvador, Brazil

5 L[A] 3/2022, Uncommon Creative Studio, London

6 L[A] 2/2018, Y&R, São Paulo

7 L[A] 6/2013, BBDO Proximity, Minneapolis

8 L[A] 3/2015, Y&R, Milan, Italy

9 L[A] 5/2021, R&G, São Paulo

10 L[A] 3+4/2021, McCann Health, Hong Kong

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 3/2015, Serviceplan, Munich

2 L[A] 3/2018, Wien Nord, Vienna

3 L[A] 5/2014, Ogilvy & Mather, Cape Town

4 L[A] 2/2014, BCube, Milan, Italy

5 L[A] 4/2018, Viajes El Corte Ingles, in-house, Madrid

6 L[A] 3/2013, Garbergs, Stockholm

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Travel

1 L[A] 6/2014, Cogent Elliott, London

2 L[A] 3/2016, Preston Kelly, Minneapolis, Minnesota

3 L[A] 2/2017, AMV BBDO, London

4 L[A] 4/2017, Bassat Ogilvy & Mather, Barcelona

5 L[A] 4/2017, BVK, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

6 L[A] 4/2014, Publicis Conseil, Paris

7 L[A] 4/2016, Jandl, Bratislava

8 L[A] 5/2017, FCB, Tel Aviv

9 L[A] 1/2014, RosaPark, Paris

10 L[A] 6/2014 Barnhart/CMI, Denver, Colorado

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

1 L[A] 2/2013, Advico Y&R, Zurich

2 L[A] 1/2015, My Agency, London

3 L[A] 1/2013, Ogilvy & Mather, Frankfurt am Main

4 L[A] 3/2014, BETC, Paris

5 L[A] 2/2022, The Tombras Group, Knoxville, Tennessee

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Over the previous pages, we invited you to engage with a shuffled deck of classic works and speculative words. We drew on and synthesized ideas from writers and commentators as diverse as Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde, Bill Bryson, Cesare Pavese, Jil Sander, Henry Adams and W. Somerset Maugham. We intended to stimulate inspiration and perhaps help you forge your own insight, or future production, around the luxury and travel space. We did it playfully but with serious intent. The more we thought and curated the subjects of travel and luxury, the more far-reaching they seemed to become.

As more than one of the cryptic thought-prompts over the previous pages suggests, luxury and travel are essential parts of life’s journey. It is, whether we are consumers or producers and often both, integrated into much of contemporary human existence. Even in poverty, or perhaps especially in poverty, aspiration goes beyond the bare necessities. Perhaps there lies the wellspring for the myths of all luxury.

For many of us though, luxury is never far outside of our routine, outside of our travel through the day from how we sleep, to how we wash, to what we put on, to what we do, where we go, and what we want to do. There are so many little and large luxuries embedded in the narrative of our existence, whether we consciously note them or not. Note that flat white with oat milk in your manicured hand, for example.

Our cover picture by Markus Müller, showing a keen mountaineer with her faithful dogs, may not seem to capture that ubiquity but it does. As so often with luxury, it is an image that draws on the aspiration of travel. Or it could equally be a travel image that plays with luxury. And it is both retro and future: after all, it was from an ad we featured in 2013 but that look has more than a touch of Barbie and is very hot this year (a major feature film with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling). And rich pink is the color of the year, we are told.

Given the growth projection for luxury goods and services that we highlight on this page, and with experiences (ie. travel) a key part of the expected uplift, we predict major creative opportunities over the rest of this decade. A recent report into the industry by Bain Consulting provided us with the data points above and went on to conclude: “Luxury is converting into art, with the ultimate objective of transcending from its original form, rooted in craftsmanship and functional excellence, towards broader meanings.”

Marketing will be to the fore in shaping a new expression for what luxury is, a deeper and extensive establishment that is the very opposite of tasteless “bling” or over-consumption. In fact, luxury is at its best, at all and at any price points, an articulation of what can make being human highly enjoyable. We can all innocently want for more of that.

LÜRZER’S ARCHIVE TRAVEL + LUXURY

Cover: Agency

Y&R, Berlin

Creative Direction

Michael Johne, Caspar Heuss, Jan Leube

Art Direction

Bernd Claussen

Copywriter

Brendan Gallahue

Photographer

Markus Müller

Digital Artist Recom

Submissions

We welcome published work, as individual or campaigns, in print, OOH, film, digital, experiential and all other marketing categories.

Please submit at luerzersarchive.com

The submitter must have the authority to grant Lürzer’s Archive the rights and permission to reproduce, edit, comment editorially on the submission and to use the submission in print, online and in any marketing material for Lürzer’s Archive. All work is featured free of charge. We accept no responsibility to return unsolicited material and reserve the right to accept or reject any material for any reason.