How have Louis Vuitton maintained and grown their brand?

Louis Vuitton has become an iconic luxury brand over the years because of its strong identity and image. A variety of marketing strategies have been implemented into consumers' minds to understand how Louis Vuitton represents their brand from its classic brown leather bags to its marketing campaigns. The success of Louis Vuitton keeps growing and growing. Having begun his career as an apprentice to trunk maker Monsieur Marechal in Paris at the age of 16, Louis Vuitton became one of the world's most prestigious brands 17 years later in 1854 (Gunn, Z. 2020).

Louis Vuitton’s growth has been maintained through the creative directors, and their marketing strategies throughout the brand’s journey so far. For 16 years, Marc Jacobs was the creative director of Louis Vuitton. Marc Jacobs has been credited with adding a contemporary twist to the classic French heritage brand. Keeping the brand's heritage alive with dynamic engagements and incorporating modernity were goals of his collections. (Hadzic, A. 2021). Through fashion shows and collaborations, such as the Eye Love Monograph Collection with Takashi Murakami, he made his designs come to life, extending their business to unprecedented heights. (Hadzic, A. 2021). Marketing strategies like fashion shows maintain the brand and help the brand evolve in the industry. Famous actors such as Jennifer Lopez, Kate Moss, Scarlett Johansson, and Uma Thurman have been associated with this brand as ambassadors, by doing this the company creates high fashion ads that feel personal in order to raise product awareness and strengthen exclusivity. In 2014, Nicolas Ghesquière was appointed creative director. Throughout his career, Nicolas has played a significant role in revolutionising fashion through Louis Vuitton. In addition to maintaining Louis Vuitton's timeless sophistication, he has created novelty merchandise that celebrates female empowerment. He has also reinvented old icons into smaller classic accessories such as the famous trunk (Liew, J. 2018).

Figure 1: Marc Jacobs brand board

Figure 2: Nicolas Ghesquière brand board

Since the 90s, collaborations have taken place with new artists throughout the years of this brand. Although these partnerships have helped and developed Louis Vuitton over the years, they have never misrepresented the classic brand identity. There are many bold examples of this, including Stephen Sprouse's punk font on Louis Vuitton bags and as mentioned earlier, Takashi Murakami's minimalistic touches of kawaii pop culture designs incorporated into the conventional designs of Louis Vuitton. Besides displaying the brand's diversity, collaborations have allowed the brand's identity to be magnified, preventing the need to renovate it as it has been created and maintained from the beginning. (Nicoletti, S. 2018). One notable collaboration is with the New York-based streetwear brand, Supreme. The fall of 2017 marked a highly respected and creditable moment in fashion history. It has been stated that its “The collaboration of dreams” and “the single hype-best collaboration of the century” (Jake Woolf, 2017). It is not only an indication of the brand's variation but also of the fashion industry's ability to go in unconventional directions and to build success and a bigger image for the brand through these collaborations.

Figure 3: Supreme X Louis Vuitton collaboration brand board