Sweet talk: when it comes to luxury, these Pierre Herme pastries take the cake. Luxury marketer Charles Znaty talks about making this brand a household name.

Vogue called him "the Picasso of pastry making"; The New York Times, the "Kitchen Emperor." Pierre Herme comes from a line of French pastry chefs that goes back four generations. Just 24 when he took over the pastry duties at Fauchon in Paris, he has continued to push the envelope when it comes to delicate, original desserts. His boutique in Paris was designed so that each individual napoleon and eclair stands out like a gem in a jewelry box. With a shop in Tokyo as well as in Paris, he has reshaped the image of cakes and pralines in two distinct cultures.

Charles Znaty is the mind behind Pierre Herme's communication and brand management. Having worked in advertising and marketing for many years, Znaty founded Pennors & Peccinotti Design Studio in Paris in 1989, and immediately focused on developing a brand management approach to luxury products. When he met Herme he knew that his experience would be an excellent fit for the chef's plans to take pastry to its highest level.

We talked with Znaty to find out how he has translated Herme's quintessential French art into a globally recognized luxury brand.

Q. How did communication help turn Pierre Herme's French pastry into a luxury item?

A. Three important components make up luxury items: premium ingredients, know-how based on tradition, and creativity. You have to make consumers aware of these three dimensions. You do this by choosing the right message. Some brands focus on tradition, others on the ingredients. We focus on creativity, on the process that brings into existence something that wasn't there before.

Q. Which emotions do you appeal to with your pastry?

A. Luxury goods appeal to consumers' desire to be immortal--this is how a watch that lasts 400 years is sold. Gastronomy is a mix of culture and education. The more consumers are educated about your product, the more comfortable they feel when they eat it. This information becomes part of who they are and gives them satisfaction. In addition, people are happy when they can buy the same chocolate that they know important people buy.

Q. What were the main challenges that you encountered in building the Pierre Herme brand?

A. Building a brand costs a lot of money, and not a single investor in France was willing to finance a start-up in the pastry sector, which is not necessarily known for producing luxury goods. We also had a geographical challenge. Managing a brand is not easy, and even less so in a place like Japan, which is so distant from our main seat in France. There is no difference between our pastries sold in Paris and those sold in Tokyo. Moreover, we needed to build a brand based on the creative talent of a man who could exceed his "human" limits. Pierre is not just another celebrity chef. He is a designer who is often compared to fashion designers. His talent is first to create, and second to choose the right people to communicate his art and manage his products and outlets.

Q. How do you communicate the Pierre Herme brand to Japanese audiences?

A. Everything moves incredibly fast in Japan. The society is very media-driven. If you transmit the right piece of information to the right people in the right place, you can obtain instant results. I have also found that what makes consumers react in Europe might not have any impact in Japan, and conversely, markets there might react strongly to something that for us is a minor detail.

When we decided to move into Japan, people advised us to adapt our products to the Japanese taste. That would have meant reducing the size of our pastry and the intensity of its taste. We decided not to do this. A small portion of Japan's population is highly educated and travels abroad and would have been able to tell the difference between the Pierre Herme pastries sold in Japan and those sold in Paris. We wanted to give them the real thing. The first year we opened in Japan we were quoted in the papers as the most expensive pastry shop in Tokyo--and the best!

Q. What have you done to build the image of Pierre Herme as an artist and a trendsetter?

A. Pierre and I met about 10 years ago. His creative work is truly exceptional. I have worked for different big names during my career and have a real passion for brands. My job is to plunge into Pierre's immense creative repertoire and to spot products that might appeal to our customers. To do this, I need to listen constantly to our environment and to be in touch with our desires. Pierre and I have a constant dialogue that very much resembles the interaction between an art director and a copywriter in an ad agency. His attention is focused on taste, smell and sound, while mine is mainly tactile and visual. I put words on the flavors and sensations in his head. These words become a vehicle that takes us from the virtual to the real.

Q. Has the Pierre Herme brand helped change the image of pastry in France and abroad?

A. Pierre has changed the profession as well as our relationship with pastry, which has become an important part of refined gastronomy. We have freed pastry from its connection with childhood memories--grandma's recipes--and the traditional recipes of the good old days. Pastry has become a topic adults can discuss without feeling ridiculous. The Haagen-Dazs brand has done a similar thing with ice cream.

Q. What is your favorite Pierre Herme pastry?

A. I am very fond of the Ispahan cake, one of the best combinations of flavors Pierre Herme has invented. The combination of rose, raspberry and lychee is something absolutely unique that you must experience at least once. It is sensorial nirvana.

Silvia Cambie is a communication consultant with Cambre Associates in Brussels, Belgium, and a member of IABC/Belgium.