If we just meet the customer needs, we are dead

Cut, colour, clarity and carat – the 4Cs of diamonds and the basis for how luxury fashion house LVMH approaches its marketing.  

Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, global brand officer at LVMH – the owner of 75 brands including Loewe, Louis Vuitton and Sephora – set out her 4Cs of luxury marketing at Cannes Lions today (18 June). They are craft, customer, creativity and culture.

Craft must be “absolutely exceptional”, while the brand should delight the customer with “every experience”, explained Delhoume-Debreu, who spent 30 years at FMCG giant P&G before moving to LVMH in 2017.

Cut, colour, clarity and carat – the 4Cs of diamonds and the basis for how luxury fashion house LVMH approaches its marketing.  

Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, global brand officer at LVMH – the owner of 75 brands including Loewe, Louis Vuitton and Sephora – set out her 4Cs of luxury marketing at Cannes Lions today (18 June). They are craft, customer, creativity and culture.

Craft must be “absolutely exceptional”, while the brand should delight the customer with “every experience”, explained Delhoume-Debreu, who spent 30 years at FMCG giant P&G before moving to LVMH in 2017.

“We don’t try to meet the customer’s needs. If we just meet the customer needs, we are dead,” she argued.  

Luxury is much more than a category of products or services. 

Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, LVMH

What LVMH does is try to “surprise” customers and exceed their expectations with products and experiences they would “not even think are possible” she added. Delhoume-Debreu acknowledged this can be a “challenge”, because brands need to do this while creating an “emotional bond” with customers and encouraging them to “stay faithful”.  

Maintaining creativity in a marketing team and how a business like LVMH shows up externally is a “balancing act” when it intersects with luxury and customer expectations, she added. 

One example of combining the two is Louis Vuitton’s New York storefront, which has been replaced by a building-sized stack of the brand’s suitcases to hide the two-year-long renovation. 

“The last C is for culture, because luxury is much more than a category of products or services,” Delhoume-Debreu explained.

A big cultural moment for LVMH last year was the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, of which the company was a premium partner. The business described the relationship with the Games as something bigger than a sponsorship deal.

“This was not product placement, this was not sponsoring, this was LVMH crafting the games and changing sports sponsorship forever,” she said. 

In terms of culture, Delhoume-Debreu explained this relates to a point of view rooted in the brand DNA.

“When we establish shared values that are bigger than the brands themselves, then we can extend the power of our brand in a wider cultural world,” she added.