EBay to Pay Damages To Unit of LVMH
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that a Paris court has found eBay guilty of harming the image of luxury brand Louis Vuitton after the online action site paid to have search terms often associated with counterfeit products directed to their site.
eBay were ordered to pay the hefty sum of €200,000 ($275,000) in damages to Louis Vuitton and to stop paying the search engines to direct certain key words to the eBay site.
In a subsequent article, WSJ’s Law blog argues whether a similar ruling would have been given in the American courts. Judging by some of the comments on WSJ, the american readership has little faith in the French legal system.
Louis Vuitton’s emotional bags
Louis Vuitton is developing a series of emotion monitoring bags – technologically designed to ‘feel what you feel’. Well, sort of.
Although currently in concept stage, art director Fernando Lahoz includes information about the new product development on his website, “Louis Vuitton bags and wallets are now able to detect owners’ emotions thanks to these new LV jewelry accessories. The bag incorporates a new HERM (heart and emotion rate monitor) in the form of a beautiful piece of jewelry which can be purchased with a bag or separately at Louis Vuitton stores. When attached to a bag the HERM automatically transmits your location and heartbeat via Bluetooth/WiFi to the owner’s smartphone. This heart and emotion rate monitor is automatically tracking the heartbeat and transmitting the information via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi to a smartphone, creating a heartbeat path and storing all the data. The bag is connected to the owner more than ever, saving a trustworthy reminder of the feelings and emotions of the owner during each journey.”
The owner is then able to map journeys that have been taken with the bag, via a downloadable iPhone app. All of which is not only very cool, but is a powerful way to reinforce the ‘journey’ equity that has become an increasingly visible piece of the brand communication over recent years. It also lifts the brand to a new level of technological and social media relevance.
The concept has been developed by Louis Vuitton in conjunction with Ogilvy Paris and Ogilvy New York… No further information available yet on whether / when the product will be made, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into a technological future for traditional luxury.
(from Agenda Inc)
Selling the dream
Luxury positioning, especially for the potential – as opposed to the existing – market is all about aspirational and slightly out of reach desirability. With this in mind LV have created a very neat piece of digital content in ‘SuperFlat Luxury’ to hook Japanese schoolgirls, with a crystal clear call to action for mobile seeding and a very compelling Alice In Wonderland brand story.
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