Does Gucci’s new luggage campaign signal a return to more classic luxury marketing after years of leaning into a Fashion-driven approach?

While Gucci advertising has often celebrated eccentricity, irony and maximalist kitsch – piling oversized sunglasses, shiny scarves and rhinestone-studded track jackets onto models – the big-budget travel shoot released in October takes a different approach. Star Ambassador Ryan Gosling poses amid piles of the brand’s most timeless travel gear, including trunks, duffle bags and monogrammed canvas toiletry bags; dressed in equally timeless menswear like loafers, pinstripe suits, skinny ties and Hawaiian beach shirts.

The twisted, high-low cachet of Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele can still be seen: Gosling is pictured eating a fast-food burger and reading trashy tabloids amid his luxury stuff, and in some images , he dons a campy western ensemble. But the overall thrust of the campaign is clear: a traditionally male Hollywood star designed for broad appeal.

The travel campaign comes as parent company Kering strives to reassure investors that Gucci – its most profitable brand and, through 2020, the fastest growing company in the industry – is progressing in a broader strategy to appear more luxurious and timeless.

Gucci’s growth lagged major rivals like Hermès and Louis Vuitton owner LVMH for nearly three years, whose more classic brand appealed to customers who increasingly sought premier status symbols. order and products that seemed unlikely to go out of fashion.

Before the pandemic, Gucci’s fashion-focused reboot under designer Michele and CEO Marco Bizzarri set the style agenda with its eye-catching maximalism, cheeky play with logos and a mix of sporty and elevated pieces. , delivering the most successful turnaround in the history of the modern luxury sector. Between 2015 and 2019, sales more than doubled and profits roughly quadrupled. But revenues fell 23% in 2020 as the coronavirus hammered tourist shopping, which Gucci has depended on more than rivals to drive growth.

After reducing its exposure to wholesale and other off-price channels in order to bolster its business last year, the brand now hopes to accelerate its growth by building on its current momentum in North America (opening stores in markets like Nashville and Montreal), revamping its management structure in China, developing timeless, high-end categories like luggage or jewelry, and supporting its menswear with standalone fashion shows.

At the heart of Gucci’s plan is a major product and marketing shift aimed at leveraging its century-old heritage and asking consumers to pay more for its most iconic pieces.

“There has been a view in the market that [Gucci] leaned a bit too fashionably and needed to rebalance,” said HSBC analyst Aurélie Husson-Dumoutier. “The most powerful luxury brands are able to grow both heritage and fashion.”

High-end evolution

This year, Alessandro Michele has shown he can continue to wow enthusiasts with shows that stay true to his quirky, maximalist vision, while introducing more classic, sexy and refined items: a mashup of historic pie-style references – but also ultra-classic monogram and leather wallets and high-end python styles. A September outing during Milan Fashion Week, featuring 68 identical twins walking hand-in-hand, generated $18.8 million in online buzz, according to consultancy Launchmetrics, while showcasing trench coats and newly discreet quilted shoulder bags.

“It’s sophisticated, opulent and timely,” said Tiffany Hsu, vice president of womenswear buying at Mytheresa, of Gucci’s current offering. “For a while people’s image of Gucci was very sporty, but the higher part of the collection suits us well: they expanded the cocktail assortment with high-priced, very expensive dresses, and then there are suit jackets and tweeds, everyday silk shirts, which serve many people.

The data shows that compared to a year ago, Gucci has both expanded its selection – increasing the number of SKUs by 20% to 5,700 items – and increased its focus on high luxury prices. The number of items priced above £2,500 ($2,830) has doubled year on year, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Piral Dadhania. The number of bags priced under £1,500 has fallen by 30%, marking a change from Gucci’s pre-pandemic assortment of bestsellers, which featured more items like the Soho shoulder bag Disco (then priced at £800).

Other initiatives to elevate the Gucci brand include pushes into fine jewelry and watches. Earlier this year, the brand launched its third fine jewelry collection (with a campaign featuring Jessica Chastain) and its second fine watch collection (featured by Idris Elba). The market for these brand extensions at the couture level is tiny; these categories are generally more about image than sales volume. But in addition to improving brand perception, these high-end moves could boost Gucci’s credibility in more salable segments like fine jewelry, costume jewelry, or fine and fashion watches.

Growth gap

Yet Gucci’s move upmarket has yet to allow the brand to grow at the same pace as its peers, sending Kering’s share price plummeting following recent reports on the results. The brand’s comparable sales rose 9% in the third quarter, compared with a 22% jump for LVMH’s fashion division and 24% growth for Hermès.

At an investor day in June, the group presented a series of changes aimed at accelerating activity. A new director of merchandising, Maria Cristina Lomanto (a veteran executive of Prada’s Miu Miu line and former CEO of Roger Vivier shoes), has been hired to help revamp commercial products, filling a void left by the former head of the brand merchandising, Jacopo Venturini, who left to become CEO of Valentino in 2019.

One of Alessandro Michele’s longtime assistants has also been promoted to studio director to oversee an expanded team as the company prepares for a “full return to the fashion calendar”. After having experimented with the association of collections in two large mixed shows per year, the brand hopes to boost innovation, stay in the fashion debate and better highlight its men’s offer by returning to six collections and five shows per year (two ready women’s à-porter -porter outings, two stand-alone men’s shows and a mixed-gender cruise).

Gucci also appointed a new president for the key Chinese market – former Tiffany & Co. executive Laurent Cathala – and overhauled its marketing and communications structure. Susan Chokachi, formerly CEO of Gucci Americas, has become executive vice president, chief brand and customer officer, while current chief marketing officer Robert Triefus will transition to a new role as CEO of Gucci Vault and metaverses, while continuing to oversee marketing as director. vice president of corporate and brand strategy. Company sources say Benjamin Cercio, a longtime Louis Vuitton executive known for his talent in celebrity relations and red carpet dressing, is also set to join the company in a key communication role.

Kering said its strategy aims to move Gucci from a period of fashion-driven “reinvention” into a new era of “sustainable elevation”. The company appears to be looking for a way to simultaneously support Michele’s maximalist vision – which continues to generate nearly 10 billion euros in annual sales – while creating a more timeless image to bolster Gucci’s overall appeal with moves like the recent Gosling travel campaign.

A Changing Playbook

As Gucci makes progress in implementing its strategy, the market remains skeptical: Kering shares have fallen 29% since the start of the year, against an industry average of 20% according to the Savigny index Partners of listed luxury companies.

“The initiatives they put in place can contribute to the density of sales. They will have some impact, but it’s more technically, not brand direction,” said UBS analyst Zuzanna Pusz. “There is a feeling among market players that the brand is a bit tired, that it needs a bit of freshening up.”

Restarting growth without completely overhauling the creative structure of a brand is a new challenge for Kering: with its stable mates Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga in addition to Gucci, the conglomerate has developed a winning playbook to overhaul the image of its brands. , bet on creators with bold creative visions and then extend them to all areas of the company, from catwalks to stores to advertising campaigns. Designers then hammer home the brand’s new message with relatively consistent collections, rather than chasing new release horizons. Leaders refer to the internal approach as “freedom within a framework”.

But at Gucci’s current scale, perhaps the playbook itself is what needs a refresh. The brand’s top-down, ultra-cohesive approach to branding and design was a key driver of its pre-pandemic success, helping to amplify its message and more than double sales. In its next chapter, the brand could take inspiration from its great rival Louis Vuitton. There, womenswear director Nicolas Ghesquière and late menswear star Virgil Abloh enjoyed a relatively free reign to express their catwalk visions, while the more stable brand image and store concept and Company neutrals provide a common canvas for their designs, as well as a suitable platform for less fashion-focused categories like jewelry and watches.

At Gucci, a cleaner, more permanent brand platform could help renew enthusiasm around Michele’s designs. It could also make room for additional creative voices alongside Michele: other brands of a similar stature like Hermès, Vuitton and Dior employ multiple creative directors for categories like menswear, womenswear, jewelry and homewares, the divergent voices helping to broaden their audience and transcend the volatility of fashion cycles.

“You can accept the fact that Gucci has had a more fashion-oriented DNA. The question is more how you respond to it,” UBS’s Pusz said. “There are different ways to manage this perceived volatility.”