The Elevation of Luxury: Art Infusion and Artification as Vehicles for Creating Shared Value

Abstract

Luxury brands have historically benefitted from engagement with the artistic community. There is a robust academic literature on the specific benefits for luxury brands of using mechanisms like art infusion and artification as a means of enhancing brand image and overcoming challenges associated with modern market conditions. Less clear, however, is how luxury brand involvement with the arts can benefit the artistic community and contribute to societal well-being more generally. In this paper, we argue that some means of artistic engagement should be considered more socially responsible than others and show how Porter and Kramer's (2011) creating shared value framework can help brands develop strategies that use art to simultaneously benefit brand and society. We highlight three specific means by which luxury brands can create shared value through their artistic engagement: 1) through reconceiving products and markets, 2) by redefining productivity in the value chain, and by enabling local cluster development, including the promotion of underrepresented artists. We close by considering how these engagements with art may play a larger, more transformative role in the CSR strategies of a luxury brand, enabling it to transcend from a corporate entity to a purveyor of culture, art, and well-being.