Re champagne sales decreasing - I was just in Alsace and visited wineries every day. One said that their sales of crémant have increased significantly. Crémant is French sparkling wine made in the champagne style...just not in Champagne. And it costs 1/3 to 1/2 what a bottle of champagne does. The winemaker said that French people are switching to crémant post Covid due to the rising costs of champagne.
To add to this, I'm from the south of England and all the major champagne producers (Moet, Tattinger etc) are buying up land there. The same chalk seam apparently runs from Champagne to Kent so the soil is practically the same, but they reckon that it won't be long until climate change makes Champagne too warm to grow grapes to the right taste. So they'll make their best sparkling wine which tastes like it always has in the UK, but won't be able to call it champagne. The product grown in France will be for the market who want the "name" product regardless of flavour.
Maybe I’m hyper aware of branding because I work in content marketing, but I felt like the LVMH product placement was cringe (especially that Michael Phelps with the trunk moment). It felt overdone, and I’m shocked to learn that LVMH is in fact not one of the top sponsors of the Olympics. In light of the impending Great Exhaustion (which is really already here), this felt like old school marketing and out of touch with what consumers do and don’t want from brands. And, your husband is 💯 right about NHL uniforms now looking like NASCAR.
LVMH's vulgar display of power (cit.) has two sides. Industry people, by and large, think it's cringe. Not just arrogant but, again, vulgar too.
The other side is the impact on the general populace. I don't think the average "viewer", aside from not even being a viable target for those brands, did really take notice. Marketers are blabbing about things such as EMV, which assigns a (bogus) monetary value to exposure. But exposure doesn't equate with impact. I think we are completely over-estimating the impact this déluge of marketing money is having on people. But LVMH, increasingly, is becoming a very unsubtle marketer, using sheer scale and its cash cannon to hammer down on customers.
Ages ago I was looking after a champagne brand who happened to be one of F1's key sponsor. It took years for people to even correctly attribute the sponsorship to our Maison, instead of the previous sponsor and, eventually (just like Rolex recently did, btw), the deal wasn't renewed because it was good at driving awareness but mostly on the worng demographic and, anyway, it wasn't elevating the image (understandably so, champagne is not sipped in that context, it is sprayed, foam-party style.)
"A small Saint Laurent Loulou bag that cost $2,950 in January now costs $2,650." Yes, that $300 makes all the difference, suddenly I can buy three of them! /sarcasm
Re champagne sales decreasing - I was just in Alsace and visited wineries every day. One said that their sales of crémant have increased significantly. Crémant is French sparkling wine made in the champagne style...just not in Champagne. And it costs 1/3 to 1/2 what a bottle of champagne does. The winemaker said that French people are switching to crémant post Covid due to the rising costs of champagne.
Fascinating!
To add to this, I'm from the south of England and all the major champagne producers (Moet, Tattinger etc) are buying up land there. The same chalk seam apparently runs from Champagne to Kent so the soil is practically the same, but they reckon that it won't be long until climate change makes Champagne too warm to grow grapes to the right taste. So they'll make their best sparkling wine which tastes like it always has in the UK, but won't be able to call it champagne. The product grown in France will be for the market who want the "name" product regardless of flavour.
SO interesting!!
Maybe I’m hyper aware of branding because I work in content marketing, but I felt like the LVMH product placement was cringe (especially that Michael Phelps with the trunk moment). It felt overdone, and I’m shocked to learn that LVMH is in fact not one of the top sponsors of the Olympics. In light of the impending Great Exhaustion (which is really already here), this felt like old school marketing and out of touch with what consumers do and don’t want from brands. And, your husband is 💯 right about NHL uniforms now looking like NASCAR.
My friends in fashion or adjacent industries found it cringe, too.
LVMH's vulgar display of power (cit.) has two sides. Industry people, by and large, think it's cringe. Not just arrogant but, again, vulgar too.
The other side is the impact on the general populace. I don't think the average "viewer", aside from not even being a viable target for those brands, did really take notice. Marketers are blabbing about things such as EMV, which assigns a (bogus) monetary value to exposure. But exposure doesn't equate with impact. I think we are completely over-estimating the impact this déluge of marketing money is having on people. But LVMH, increasingly, is becoming a very unsubtle marketer, using sheer scale and its cash cannon to hammer down on customers.
Ages ago I was looking after a champagne brand who happened to be one of F1's key sponsor. It took years for people to even correctly attribute the sponsorship to our Maison, instead of the previous sponsor and, eventually (just like Rolex recently did, btw), the deal wasn't renewed because it was good at driving awareness but mostly on the worng demographic and, anyway, it wasn't elevating the image (understandably so, champagne is not sipped in that context, it is sprayed, foam-party style.)
"A small Saint Laurent Loulou bag that cost $2,950 in January now costs $2,650." Yes, that $300 makes all the difference, suddenly I can buy three of them! /sarcasm