Once upon a time, premium was simple. It was a VIP section cordoned off with velvet rope. It was bottle service with sparklers. It was the thickest business card, the loudest logo, the hotel with the most stars. It was, above all, a price tag you made sure everyone could see.
That version of premium is dead now. Or rather, it has become deeply unfashionable, like doing cocaine at dinner parties or calling your therapist your "shrink." It happens, but nobody interesting does it anymore.
We've entered the age of quiet luxury - except it isn't really quiet, and it isn't exactly luxury. It's a new premium paradigm altogether, one built not on what you conspicuously spend, but on what you inconspicuously know.
The Shift to Cultural Capital
The most telling manifestation of this shift can be found in one of advertising's most ingenious sleights of hand: The Economist's iconic "I never read The Economist" campaign.
The genius of this campaign wasn't what it said but what it made you feel. As you smirked at the fictional management trainee who never read The Economist, the ad performed a perfect psychological ambush: you were invited to smirk at someone who'd missed the intellectual party while simultaneously confirming your invitation hadn't been lost in the mail. It created an instant conspiracy between you and The Economist - a shared eyebrow raise that cost nothing but delivered immediate belonging.
These ads didn't sell information; they sold the feeling of not being the person who misses out on cultural significance. They didn't say "this wasn't meant for you." They said "you could belong here, if you just tried harder."
This is today's premium. Not access to exclusivity, but participation in cultural significance. Not status through wealth, but identity through knowledge.
What Premium Looks Like Now
The old luxury was loud - obvious brand signifiers, price tags, visible status markers. The new premium is quiet - discernment, curation, and cultural literacy. It manifests in knowing:
- Where to drink in Cape Town that's not a tourist trap
- Getting the reference in a meme before it blows up
- Watching a cultural figure before their Netflix special
- Getting the reference in a meme before it blows up
- Watching a cultural figure before their Netflix special
It's being able to say, "Oh, I was listening to them back when..." but being just self-aware enough to catch yourself before you actually finish that sentence.
The Intimacy Economy: Premium is Now Personal
Being premium used to mean being exclusive. Now it means being connected. People are rejecting broad, mass-market experiences in favour of smaller, more curated, more intimate communities.
Premium is no longer about who gets left out. It's about who gets let in.
Being in on the joke is the new premium - it's not about gatekeeping, it's about rewarding those who care.
Being in on the joke is the new premium - it's not about gatekeeping, it's about rewarding those who care.
Premium used to be about signalling status to others. Now it's about signalling identity to yourself.
This shift is fundamentally changing how status is conveyed, recognised, and valued in contemporary society. It's transforming how brands must approach premium positioning.
The Premium Positioning Paradox
For brands, especially in categories traditionally anchored in conspicuous consumption, this shift creates a positioning paradox. How do you signal premium without the traditional signifiers of premium?
Look at most premium alcohol brands. Their premium positioning typically relies on:
- Heritage and tradition credentials
- Craft and production authenticity
- Premium consumption experiences
- Endorsement from cultural elites
- Craft and production authenticity
- Premium consumption experiences
- Endorsement from cultural elites
These approaches face critical limitations in today's environment:
- They are increasingly commoditised: With so many brands employing similar premium tactics, it's harder to stand out
- They lack cultural relevance: Heritage and craftsmanship stories often feel disconnected from contemporary interests
- They struggle to build community: Traditional premium tends to focus on individual status rather than collective identity
Premium in Entertainment: New Cultural Hierarchies
This positioning tension becomes particularly evident in entertainment, where long-established premium hierarchies are being challenged and redefined.
Consider how cultural institutions have traditionally defined premium:
- Music through exclusive festivals, high-status venues, and critical discourse
- Fashion through runway shows, designer prestige, and editorial validation
- Art through galleries, museums, and auction systems
- Fashion through runway shows, designer prestige, and editorial validation
- Art through galleries, museums, and auction systems
These systems created clear markers of what "counts" as premium. But in an era when a TikTok creator can generate more cultural conversation than a museum exhibition, these markers are increasingly insufficient.
The most interesting brands aren't trying to climb the existing premium ladders. They're building new ones entirely.
Look at A24, which transformed from a film distributor to a cultural filter that defines "good taste" in cinema. Their premium positioning isn't about heritage or tradition - it's about curation, perspective, and cultural authority. They don't just distribute films; they signal which films matter.
Or consider how Netflix has redefined premium in television - not through traditional network prestige but through a new kind of cultural authorship. They don't just distribute content; they shape what kinds of stories get told, how they're told, and how audiences discover them.
As premium shifts from conspicuous consumption to cultural capital, brands must shift from product credentials to cultural authorship.
The concept of cultural authorship represents a powerful evolution in premium brand strategy:
- Traditional approach: Brands sponsor or participate in culture
- Emerging approach: Brands create and define culture
- Emerging approach: Brands create and define culture
Cultural authorship means moving beyond simply attaching your brand to existing cultural territories and instead becoming the architect of cultural experiences, conversations, and institutions.
This isn't merely conceptual. Red Bull transformed from an energy drink to the definitive voice in extreme sports. Supreme shifted from a skateboard shop to the arbiter of streetwear culture. Glossier evolved from a beauty blog to the defining force in millennial beauty culture.
What these brands understand is that cultural relevance isn't something you rent through advertising. It's something you build through infrastructure.
Deepened by Friction: Earning Your Place
The most culturally valuable experiences aren't the easiest to access. There's a reason the best parties don't have flyers. The best cultural references don't explain themselves. The most powerful cultural content doesn't go viral because it's easy, but because it makes you feel like you've unlocked something.
People crave experiences that feel earned. If you have to dig a little deeper to understand, it sticks with you longer.
This creates an opportunity for brands to build premium experiences that don't just entertain, but reward cultural investment. Where being "in the know" requires and rewards genuine engagement. Where cultural moments aren't just consumed, but participated in, discussed, absorbed into identity.
The challenge for brands is no longer about being accessible to everyone; it's about being valuable to the right people in the right way.
The New Code of Premium
For brands navigating this shifting premium landscape, the new code of premium requires a fundamental reorientation:
- From exclusivity to fluency: Premium isn't about who can afford it; it's about who understands it
- From isolation to connection: Premium isn't about standing apart; it's about belonging to something discerning
- From signalling to knowing: Premium isn't about showing status; it's about recognising significance
- From consumption to participation: Premium isn't about what you buy; it's about what you're part of
- From serious to smart: Premium isn't about lacking humour; it's about wielding it intelligently
When brands shift from borrowing cultural relevance to creating cultural infrastructure, they're not just reframing a marketing strategy. They're acknowledging a fundamental truth about how premium functions today.
Premium isn't a product quality. It's a relationship between cultural understanding and identity. It's not what you consume. It's how you're consuming it, why you're consuming it, and who you're consuming it with.
It's not being the person at the velvet rope.
It's being the person who knows there's a better party happening somewhere else entirely.
TL;DR
The definition of premium has fundamentally shifted from conspicuous consumption (visible wealth, VIP sections, loud logos) to cultural capital (insider knowledge, niche references, quiet literacy). Today's premium isn't about exclusivity but about participation in cultural significance.
The Economist's iconic "I never read The Economist" campaign perfectly captured this shift - selling not information but the feeling of being culturally fluent. For brands, this creates a positioning paradox: how to signal premium without traditional premium signifiers. The most innovative companies are solving this by becoming cultural authors rather than just cultural participants, creating the infrastructure for how culture functions rather than simply attaching themselves to it.