Steve O'Farrell

This is what I call the luxury trap. It’s a fatal mistake many brands make. Defining a luxury brand by its functional aspects and high prices cannot replace the value a brand creates.

Peer learning: How can education learn from the success of behavior change organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or weight watchers? How can the social pressure from others around us make us more likely to study, learn new things, and do things we wouldn't otherwise do on our own? (e.g. Microverse)

At the same time, you want people to constantly reinvent the brand, right?

Yes, otherwise you won’t be current, and a star brand is current—or you could call it fashionable. It is edgy, it has sex appeal, it is modern. In some way, it fulfills a fantasy. It is so new and unique you want to buy it. You feel as if you must buy it, in fact, or else yo... See more

What was your reaction when you first saw John Galliano’s newspaper dresses?

I was shocked, which is good, of course. A new product is not creative—it is not important—if it does not shock when you first see it.

And after the shock wore off, did your managerial alarm bells start ringing?

I don’t have alarm bells when it comes to creativity. If you ... See more

The problem is that the quality of timelessness takes years to develop, even decades. You cannot just decree it. A brand has to pay its dues—it has to come to stand for something in the eyes of the world. But you can, as a manager, enhance timelessness—that is, create the impression of timelessness sooner rather than later. And you do that with unc... See more

Luxury is no longer about simply reviving heritage codes of the past, but rather it’s a dream space. Status is therefore found in radical solutions and ground-breaking projects.

Customers must want the product. That sounds simple, I am sure, but to get advertising right is very, very difficult—it’s difficult to get advertising to represent the true brand. Most companies think it is enough to use advertising to present a picture of the product. That’s not enough. You need to project the image of the brand itself.

The latest... See more

Each year, new products account for approximately 15 % of LVMH sales, and some of them enjoy operating margins of up to 47 % . (For a list of the company’s brands, see the exhibit “The House of Arnault.”) What makes these statistics all the more remarkable is that many of these products at first appear utterly outlandish—a kidney-shaped handbag cov... See more