At a recent NYC Luxury Marketing Council meeting, Linda Ong, CEO of TruthCo., an omnichannel branding firm, said: "In 2017, Millennials will eclipse Baby Boomers in luxury spending." Sounds impressive and reassuring. But whether or not this prediction is true, this sound bite says nothing about what it means for your particular brand. Nor how to make sure your brand gets its fair share of that future luxury spending.

Asked in our recent, qualitative survey, "What are the trends that must be addressed by top management of luxury brands in 2016?," C-suite executives responded as follows, ranked in order of importance.

America's most affluent - the 1% - are entering the holiday season feeling pretty good about themselves. According to the Time Inc./YouGov Survey of Affluence and Wealth, they are awash in cash and have little, if any, debt. Compared to the other 99% of American income earners, they are mostly immune to the effects of higher taxes and fees for services such as healthcare.

On a recent business trip to Las Vegas, I was greeted by the the hotel desk attendant with an enthusiastic, "Welcome back." The preferred treatment continued when I called guest services and was asked if I'd like to order the same meal I had last time I visited. I was getting the red carpet treatment, even though I had only visited once, eight months earlier.

For decades, some marketers to affluent consumers (adults 18+ in age living in households with household incomes of $75,000 or more - the top 44% of American adults by household incomes) have been aware of the potential value of appealing to more than what consumers see or hear, as the typical affluent consumer has five senses that can be targeted: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Recently, the topic has also been attracting attention in the business news. For example, the March 2015 Harvard Business Review focused on the five senses in its "Science of Sensory Marketing" report, and the …