The Art of Slowing Down
065: Dentsu’s Unraveling: The Cracks Emerging in One of Advertising’s Biggest Firms
In October 2024, LVMH signed a groundbreaking 10-year sponsorship deal with Formula 1, replacing Rolex in a partnership that could exceed $1 billion. This move marked a strategic alignment between the luxury conglomerate and the fastest-growing global motorsport, capitalizing on F1’s surging popularity—fueled by Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” and an expanding race calendar.
The timing is questionable as demand for luxury goods softens, globally and not just in China. Given the amount of spend, I wanted to dive into who LVMH is working with from a marketing perspective and discovered that they apparently work with Dentsu.
Where I became a bit confused is that it appears that Publicis Groupe won LVMH’s business in North America over from Dentsu in 2023. Dentu’s website also states that they work with Jaguar Land Rover however a press release from JLR states that they moved on from Dentsu and over to Omnicom on a 3-year contract in May 2023. Now it could be that various divisions within each company work with LVMH & JLR in different capacities and I would need to do more work to determine this.
