LVMH Acquires Tiffany & Co.: Why It’s A Prudent Match

LVMH (Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE) is acquiring Tiffany & Co. for approximately €14.7 billion (or $16.2 billion). For LVMH, this will strengthen its presence in the US market and position in the jewelry category. For Tiffany & Co., it presents an opportunity to turn around its fortunes after struggling with poor growth over the past few years. Joining LVMH puts Tiffany & Co. under the umbrella of a luxury brand group with deep knowledge of luxury and the financial muscle to invest in infrastructure and technology needed to meet growing online luxury retail sales and increasingly digitally savvy luxury consumers. Tiffany & Co. will also benefit from having an owner that, unlike a private equity house, will put long-term success and health of the brand ahead of actions that boost sales in the short term at the expense of the brand. Overall, the acquisition by LVMH is a good opportunity for Tiffany & Co., but it is not the panacea for all its problems. Luxury brand houses (or “maisons”) across the board (and across LVMH) face a challenging journey to become not just brand-obsessed but truly customer-obsessed. Read more here.

Ryanair Partners With Vodafone To Digitally Transform Its Customers’ Airline Experiences

Europe’s largest airline group has chosen Vodafone as its technology communications partner to help it drive continuous innovations and operational efficiencies via cloud, SDWAN (software-defined WAN), the internet of things (IoT), and security services. It looks to use these technologies to proactively provide new options, enhance the experience of its 153 million annual customers, and be a fast responder to their requests and demands. This agreement is also Vodafone’s largest rollout of SDWAN so far, which will operate across 40 countries. SDWAN provides applications and services with specific, optimized network capacities connecting over public, private, and cloud resources. Ryanair sees this and IoT as providing connectivity for more than 200 destinations across these 40 countries to optimize travel efficiency, experiences, and security at its lowest connectivity fares to date.

Ironically, Ad-Free Netflix Shows Us What Ads Could Be

As the streaming wars continue, Netflix gets creative with advertising — not on its platform but for it. The media and production giant recently caught the ad world’s eye with its Russian doll of an ad that spotlighted Netflix, Samsung, and Ryan Reynolds’ gin all in one. With too many boring, repetitive, and creepy ads out there frustrating consumers, we were glad to see someone make an ad worth remembering. We weren’t surprised to see out-of-the-box thinking from Netflix, though. The company made our list of B2C Marketing predictions this year based on its ingenious (unpaid) product placements and Whopper-related activations for “Stranger Things.” Netflix’s commitment to an ad-free experience, plus the fact that its top competitor won’t run ads for Netflix on its platform, will force Netflix to get supremely innovative with how, where, and when it tells its own story to prospects and users. Pair this creative strength with a leading user experience, as shown by the recent Forrester Streaming Media Wave™ evaluation, and this gives Netflix a fighting chance to sustain a slot in users’ limited media subscription wallet. It also thankfully raises the bar for all CMOs on what advertising could and should be: creative and customer-obsessed.