The Art of Slowing Down
170: Another Moët F1 Blunder, Gaultier’s Runway Disaster & Trump’s Pasta Tariffs - A Weekend in Luxury Chaos
This past weekend was quite busy. George Russell won the Singapore Grand Prix and celebrated with a shower of… you guessed it… Prosecco! Duran Lantink had his inaugural show in Paris as Creative Director of Jean Paul Gaultier which was a disaster. Lastly, over in the US, the Trump Administration implemented a 90%+ tariff on pasta from Italy. There was also some positive news, and I’ll get into that at the end as well! With all that being said let’s dive in!
Back in July I wrote an article titled “Not Just a €1bn Branding Miss – A Masterclass in Corporate Complacency”. TL;DR Sauber had an unexpected podium finish and even though LVMH paid €1bn to be a name sponsor of Formula 1, the team didn’t have champagne to celebrate and the Mercedes and Aston Martin teams brought them Laurent Perrier. The point here being that if you’re a name sponsor of Formula 1 every facility should be drowning in Moët Hennessy product. I went on to say:
“A very valid question that now arises is “what the fuck is Alexandre Arnault doing over at Moët?” First of all, why is there any other brand of champagne anywhere near a team garage, Paddock Club etc. It’s so simple to ensure that each team has a few cases of Moët in their garage area prior to the start of each race. Additionally, this is a massive, missed marketing opportunity for Moët to have their brand all over tv and social media in an excellent moment of class and sportsmanship. Instead, Laurent Perrier is shining in the moment (it has millions of views on Instagram, X, TikTok etc.) and they didn’t have to pay €1bn.” – Intern Pierre
Now one would think that Alexandre Arnault and the following members of the team responsible for the Formula 1 Partnership at Moët Hennessy would have learned from this and made some changes as the Formula 1 season went on.
Carloa Braggio – Senior Project Manager F1 Partnership at Moët Hennessy
Thibault Cocardon – Global Head of Partnerships & Influence at Moët Hennessy
Emmy Aoun Gestin – Chief Marketing Officer at Moët Hennessy
Sebastien Vilmont – Managing Director Southeast Asia (Singapore) at Moët Hennessy
Elodie Koeberlé – Brand Director Wines, Champagnes & Sparkling Singapore & Malaysia at Moët Hennessy
The Singapore GP ended up being a fun race to watch, (albeit with Ferrari underperforming) and George Russell from Mercedes earning the win. As per tradition drivers spray champagne during the podium ceremony which appears to have been done with Moët. After the ceremony the team was taking pictures and filming content of their celebration and George Russell posted to Instagram of himself being showered by what appears to be Mionetto Prosecco.
Mionetto Prosecco retails for around €12, is owned by the Freixenet Group which is recognized as one of the world’s leading sparkling wine producers generating nearly €2.6 billion in revenue. Most importantly they have no affiliation with LVMH. As of yesterday, they were yet another beneficiary of free advertising to George Russell’s 7+ million followers on Instagram. I would need to run the social numbers, however I am going to assume that George Russells’ video received more views than the various Murakami x Dom Pérignon (or should I call it “Dom P”) targeted content that has been going around. Additionally, more than one follower has brought this to my attention so I’m also going to say that this is something people and most likely LVMH’s competition is paying attention to.
At this point I’m not really sure what else there is to say here. I mentioned last week that the collaboration with Murakami x Dom Pérignon signaled that LVMH’s wine & spirits division is fucked, and I keep seeing data points that confirm this. If your marketing team can’t get their shit together to a point where your product isn’t everywhere to be found at events that you’re paying €1bn to sponsor I don’t know what to tell you.
If it were me instead of painting animated flowers on bottles of champagne and calling them “collectable” (nobody is putting these in their cellar), I would be using the €1bn partnership I’m paying for to work with various teams to put their logos on limited edition bottles of Champagne that they could give to guests, keep in the garages etc. Here is an example of what LVMH could have done with Mercedes:
I’m not the most creative person in the world, however I think there are interesting and creative things you could do with the bottles, packaging etc. that would be great for team garages, hospitality and also to sell as limited edition for people who are into Formula 1 given that the fan base is growing at a massive clip and the 41%+ of the fanbase is female which could be a good parlay into other LVMH brands. You also wouldn’t have to deal with all of the F1 and individual team marketing “red tape” since you’re a name sponsor for the organization.
This is all to say I don’t think that turning a lot of this stuff around is difficult, you just need to be a bit more creative and the individuals currently running the show clearly do not get it. Unless something major changes within this division I would expect to see continued decline, especially given the recent Nielsen data that just came out (ping me directly if you want more on that).
Moving on to Paris Fashion Week! Duran Lantink debuted as Creative Director for Jean Paul Gaultier and the feedback was not good.
I am not a fashion critic, and I do understand that things made for the runway can get very “creative” however the men’s and women’s designs were… I’ll just let you judge for yourself. That being said if Duran needs some additional insight, I think I found something he could add to the line!
If I were Jose Manuel Albesa (Deputy CEO & Beauty and Fashion President at Puig) and Marc Puig, you better believe I would have been at Puig Tower in Barcelona early this morning figuring out how to fix this disaster. With the solution being