Introduction

Alexander Gallé is Partner and Creative Director at GALLE - a design and advertising studio focused on luxury, entertainment and fashion brands - and one of Europe's leading art directors in the luxury brands online sector. Gallé's portfolio includes websites, online ads and e-commerce solutions for YSL, Asprey, Garrard, Dior Beauty, Marchesa, Corum Timepieces, Boucheron, Jimmy Choo, MCM, Twentieth Century Fox, Buena Vista International, Miramax, Metropolitan Hotel, Marbella Club, Hotel Casadelmar, Lebua Hotels and Resorts and many leading hotels around the world. Gallé led the re-branding strategy for Corum Timepieces in 2006 and art directed their Unlock and Conquer ad campaigns in 2007. Later in that year, Gallé's studio also launched Artipolis, the social network for art and design professionals. Gallé combines 15 years of design and art direction with in-depth knowledge of the commercial and strategic aspects of the internet and Web 2.0.

Interview with Alexander Gallé

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Luxury Briefing: the Alfa Giulietta website

"Love & Mayhem: the New Alfa Giulietta website", by Alexander Gallé, originally appeared as a column in Luxury Briefing's July 2010 edition.

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Love & Mayhem: the new Alfa Giulietta website
by Alexander Gallé

When I first started writing the Luxury Briefing column, a few years ago now, the idea was to call it "Love and Mayhem", focusing my analysis of the luxury sector's online activities on websites that make your heart beat faster.

Just as the best theatre plays display man's struggle with the forces of Eros (Love) and Thanatos (Death), just as Jean-Luc Godard judged that all you need to make a good movie was a girl and a gun, my thinking was that the best experiences - both online and in life itself - are the ones that bring you ample doses of love and mayhem. There can be no doubt about it: the best online experiences are informed by the language of film, and what is luxury about, if not to bring you the best possible experiences?

Alfa Romeo is a brand with a heart. Because of this, it sits in a brand category of its own. If you have any doubts about this, go on YouTube and watch any car review show you can think of. It's all about torque and horsepower and little niggly facts that make the critics compare and contrast different cars against each other, until you get to an Alfa Romeo. Suddenly, the sternest critics are prepared to throw it all away, they forgive the car any possible weaknesses they would normally pounce upon, and talk about love, about heart palpitations, about latin passion and the pleasure of driving careless and free like a leaf in the wind.

The new Giulietta's website presses those very same buttons. Just as there are plenty of sceptics that will tell you the electrics on the dashboard aren't up to standard, there are plenty of web usability analysts that will knock this website because this or that button isn't where the user would expect it. It is perhaps not completely obvious that there are, in fact, two sites (the Everyday Thrills part, and the Alfa Ego part) so that some people who just don't "get Alfa" will probably remain in their tepid state of lust deprivation.

My guess is Alfa is really appealing to all those people who have had a soft spot for the brand over the years, who perhaps always liked the brand but felt a little disappointed that the key Alfa ingredients were somehow missing from their latest models, and who are therefore prepared to spend a little more time over this site to see if the new Giulietta lives up to the heritage.

To those people, even the loading bar looking like a speedline will add something to the experience, even the way the camera tracks into the scudetto will make them want to forward this site to their fellow Alfisti.

So, yes, it'll probably take them a little while longer to find where they can download the technical specs but, by Giove, listen to that engine roaring and purring, look at that jewel of a car floating through that blood red landscape... Doesn't this website make you just want to fall in love with Alfa all over again and book a test drive?

Visit the new Alfa Giulietta site at www.alfagiulietta.com

Visit the Gallé website at www.galle.com

Mitsi, leather bags and accessories with love from Brasil

Gallé launch the new website for Mitsi, the Brazilian leather bags and accessories brand.

www.mitsifashion.com

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Luxury Briefing: Luxury vs. Action Heroes

Luxury vs. Action Heroes, by Alexander Gallé, originally appeared as a column in Luxury Briefing's May 2010 edition.

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Luxury vs. Action Heroes

by Alexander Gallé

BaselWorld, to be frank, can sometimes be a little disappointing...

Or rather, it can be if you're more interested in watch brands' communications than in their complications. The moment you walk through that long corridor at Geneva airport on your way to Basel, all you see is an endless row of ads displaying three-quarter-angle product shots with tired slogans on plain-coloured backgrounds, the only difference being the logos underneath them. None of them really stand out, and very few of them will even try to do something resembling a lifestyle campaign. The ones that do go there inevitably end up complementing their ads with some word-kit-generated platitudes about experiencing luxury or indulging oneself in a unique world of craftsmanship.

There are the exceptions, of course, brands that have understood that people don't buy a £20,000 watch because they want to know what time it is - a £50 quartz watch will do just fine if that's all you want - but because they're enchanted and engaged. Some companies, like Patek Philippe, try to own an aspect of time itself: long time, time expressed as a legacy, leaving something for the next generation, etc. Our own studio's work for Corum, from 2005 to 2009, tried to own another aspect of time: the now. This aspect of time inevitably takes you down the road of "seizing the moment", from which came the idea that there is a Corum watch for every exceptional hero you want to be. Want to become a great statesman? Buy the Romvlvs watch. A billionaire? Buy the Coin watch. A great adventurer? Buy the Admiral's Cup... What all these great careers have in common is that you need courage to take the first step. You need courage to quit your day job and run for candidate, start your own business or travel the world.

Result: Corum is courage. Unlock yourself and conquer the world. Unlock and Conquer.

Nothing expressed this better, of course, than Corum's owner himself: Severin Wunderman, Mr. Courage incarnated. A Holocaust survivor who went to America as a kid after the war, who founded Gucci Timepieces in the 70s, who beat cancer in the 80s, who bought Corum in the 90s and designed some of the most theatrical and interesting watches in the 00s. When Severin Wunderman passed away, about 18 months ago, a huge source of courage and creativity simply vanished from the watch industry.

How delightful, therefore, to have found a new brand that expresses these values with all the more aplomb. And how refreshing to see that it is a small brand, with an even smaller advertising budget.

I remember thinking a few years ago how great it would be if luxury brands could get more involved with extreme sports. Most millionaires today are under 40. Many of them have made their fortunes from dotcoms and cool tech companies. Many of them like to do the kind of sports that'll either make your heart stop or pump more blood to your brain than could possibly fit between your ears. So, you would think luxury brands would be falling over each other to attach themselves to something other than golf or tennis. How about skydiving, freediving, snowboarding, parkour or rock climbing?

Enter Linde Werdelin, who not only make the watches to give you that adrenaline rush, but who have also embarked on a new and exciting communications route: graphic novels. Action heroes and heroines, all sporting the coolest gadgets on their wrists while flying, running and swimming to the Earth's most extreme extremities.

What's even more exciting is the level of interaction you will see with the brand communications over the coming months, until the newly branded site is officially launched. Much of the audience's feedback, ideas for new characters and stories, are discussed openly on the brand's own Facebook page. New pictures of character illustrations and outlines for future stories are presented and discussed right there. Nothing gets a fanclub going more than this kind of open-source, open-minded, peer-to-peer way of interacting with the audience.

Of course, you need an action hero's nerve to do something like this, because getting it wrong when you stand out that much will make your brand that much more vulnerable. The stories will have to be engaging, the characters will have to look sexy and ultra cool, and the content will have to have its own emotional rewards rather than just look like a feature-length ad for the watches themselves. But Linde Werdelin's rewards will be there for years to come, as new episodes come out in time for new collection launches. Walking down that corridor in Geneva's airport will become something to look forward to with all the excitement and anticipation of a kid waiting for the newsagents to open, so they can buy their latest fix of action and adventure.

www.luxury-briefing.com

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Michel Dyens, brand identity and website

Gallé create brand identity and website for Michel Dyens, the luxury industry's leading investment banking and M&A specialist.

If I had to choose one person in the luxury sector who best incarnates its values, it would have to be Michel Dyens. For what is luxury if not courteousness, culture and quiet confidence? Aside from these great personal qualities, Mr Dyens's knowledge of this industry is simply encyclopedic.

www.micheldyens.com
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Van Pul & Thieltgen: brand identity and website

Gallé create brand identity and website for Van Pul & Thieltgen, the Brussels-based executive search company.

Van Pul was an interesting brief, since the company brings into the executive recruitment market an approach that is very much that of a luxury brand, both in its values and its aesthetic approach.

The company was created by Mischa van Pul - ex-partner at Russell Reynolds and Heidrick & Struggles - and Catherine Thieltgen, an ex-Unilever executive now dedicated to business coaching.

Their added value lies in the complementary nature of these two services, providing not only a very 'boutique' and focused way of working that you just don't get from the larger players in this sector, but also an approach to human resources that is highly original and, well, unique: human resources as a raw material that an artisan needs to craft in order to deliver a made-to-measure 'product'.

This is how Van Pul approach the task of placing and nurturing the executives they take on: like a piece of the finest wood that needs to be crafted and shaped into a beautiful and useful item of furniture.

Our own treatment of the brand aimed to bring to the foreground this idea of 'craftsmen in executive search' as well as the added value of the two complementing partners, which is expressed rather well in the slogan - Heroes are Made - as well as the isotype: aside from being perfectly symmetrical and balanced, it actually looks like an instrument that might be used by a precision-driven craftsman.

www.vanpul.com
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Luxury Briefing: Google vs LVMH

Google vs. LVMH, by Alexander Gallé, is a column published originally in Luxury Briefing's December 2009 edition.
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Google vs. LVMH
by Alexander Gallé

2009 will be remembered as the year luxury giants piled up the lawsuits against the internet giants. First came eBay, then Google.

In a recent column, I took eBay's side in the ebay vs. LVMH case, presenting eBay as a modern-day saviour of the free market system, the very thing that ensured the success of the luxury industry to begin with. Some readers responded that the basic flaw of the free market is that it only works in a 'perfect information' environment. Simply put, the point made is that true demand / supply equilibrium can only be achieved when consumers have all the information about the options at hand. This has long been the ground for accusations made against the advertising industry: that it distorts the information presented to the consumer.

In this column, I argue that what is true for goods and services is equally true for information: a free market in information ensures near-perfect information, much in the way that the free market ensures a near-perfect match between the supply of goods and services and what people actually want.


Let's imagine, for example, that a documentary comes out explaining some horrible method of producing everyone's favourite food. Having watched the documentary, opponents of the free market will immediately call for tough regulation to ensure new standards in food production.

What they are forgetting, however, is that the documentary itself is a product of free entreprise: a producer sees an opportunity to produce a documentary that everyone will want to watch - which means he will sell it to many TV channels and get a high return on his investment - and invests in getting the best possible information to make his case, invests in cameras, cameramen, etc. The documentary is made, lots of people see it and make up their own minds as to whether they still want to consume their favourite food. The market in everyone's favourite food is then adjusted accordingly. Problem solved.

Of course, not every product or service on the market deserves a documentary. Some things just require lots of press articles, or academic papers, or opinion pieces, or blogs, or other forms of cheaply-produced information. As the free market, via the web, supplies all this information, we find that some of it is very valuable, and some of it less so. A measure of information value is called for. That measure is relevance.

Enter Google: the search engine that ensures the highest possible relevance in relation to consumers' information requests.

A quick description of Google's services. Google has turned the web into a questions-and-answers medium. Users type a question in the form of keywords, and they receive an answer in the form of links to various websites that all claim to address the subject of enquiry.

Google's way of measuring relevance is two-fold.

First, the website publisher makes a claim in his website's meta-data that it is about a particular subject, by attaching keywords to it. Google measures the frequency of said keywords in relation to the website's actual content. If this frequency is high, the site is deemed more relevant.

Second, the website is linked to by other websites, by other people who find its content useful or interesting. Google values this type of relevance the way an academic paper is valued when many people refer to it in their own work: the more people quote you, the more important you become. According to Google, the more people link to you, the more important you become.

The usefulness of this method of sorting has proven itself by the very fact that Google became, without advertising or substantial PR activity, the preferred search-engine for hundreds of millions of web users. You only have to cast your mind back to the mid-to-late 90s - the pre-Google era - to see the value of this service, which is provided to the world in unlimited quantities entirely free.

Now, Google operates in a free market. Just as we do not expect bakers and butchers to provide bread and meat out of some charitable sense of duty to society, we do not expect Google to do this work unpaid either. Google's source of income is in the paid-for search results. Google makes no claim that this information is not paid for: the paid-for search results are separated, and highlighted in a different colour to the rest of the algorythm-generated content. It is, in other words, not Google undermining the integrity of the information by telling you this paid-for information is relevant to the keywords you entered, but the people who paid for it.

LVMH are now suing Google because some of the (mostly paid-for) search results come from vendors of counterfeit goods. But suing Google is suing the messenger, or the postal company, who delivered a letter with bad news. If LVMH is in the mood for suing, let them sue the people who paid for the keywords. If their claim is that there are too many to monitor, let them create their own search engine to track them all: the data is as accessible to them as it is to Google. They may not even need to do much of the tracking work themselves: if they think consumers are up for denouncing the vendors of counterfeit goods, let them create a simple peer-to-peer network that will enable consumers to report the vendors.

This will ensure that the information - the vital ingredient that ensures market recognition of the superior quality claimed by LVMH and other luxury brands - remains free-flowing and, of course, near-perfect.

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