Announcing my new book "Luxury Subversion"

Available at an airport newsstand bookshelf near you now. How to turn the enemies of luxury in on themselves. And by yourself a two weeks in Mustique and a chalet in Zermatt.

Imagine you’re a raging anti-capitalist. You wake up one morning and think “this is nuts. I’m sitting in a cold flat, with scratchy sheets, and a cat with worms. And I have to pretend I like mung beans and vegan shoes.”

It occurs to you that you spend your days looking down on people wealthier than you, who’ve been captured by ‘the man’. But what makes it worse is you also know exactly why they’ve been captured. You know this because you’ve spent years reading turgid books about it. And you suddenly think “I hate living here. I hate that cat. And I really fancy some decent shoes, central heating, two chocolate labradors, and a fortnight every year in Mustique.”

So you decide to turn from poacher-to-gamekeeper. And start selling luxury wines. But you don’t use the lessons of people who really like the idea of luxury wines. You do it sy subverting everything you’ve learned from people who really (really) hate luxury goods. 

Your transformation

Your approach is so successful you end up with a paper in the Harvard Business Review and an airport “business bestseller”. It’s called "Luxury Subversion". The blurb declares:

Now is the time to leverage the deep insights of those who have critiqued luxury as a tool of capitalist exploitation, alienation, and spectacle. Rather than resist these forces, “luxury Subversion” exploits them for maximum profit. This book’s approach understands that luxury thrives not on the intrinsic value of goods, but on their symbolic power—their ability to represent status, aspiration, and scarcity. You will learn how to engineer narratives that manipulate desire. The book show you how to embed products in cultural scripts that elevate them beyond mere commodities. You will transform your brands into symbols of power and identity. "Luxury Subversion" taps into the hollow promise of authenticity and personalization while maintaining control over the emotional and psychological mechanisms that drive consumption.

You smile at Heathrow as you see someone buy a copy from WH Smith. And smile again as they join the economy class queue. Instead, you go off to board first - in first - on your way to a $100,000 speaking engagement.

For just $100 I will give you the core lessons of “Luxury Subversion”. Along with a year’s worth of insights from The Wine Marketing Masterclass. And twice to thrice-weekly posts on all sorts of fascinating ways the world of wine tells us about ourselves.

Being (briefly) serious, wine is really (really) bad at adding value. But luxury brands are really (really) good at it. There is no shortage of people out there who will tell you how and why brands succeeded that wanted to aspire to luxury. But what would a wine brand look like if it was made by someone who hated the very idea of it? But had figured out why it would be so appealing in the first place? Let’s find out.