From Luxury to Big Tech: What I Learned About Brand Power 💡

After nearly a decade leading global marketing for European luxury consumer brands—at companies like 🇫🇷 L’Oréal and 🇮🇹 BVLGARI—I pivoted to Silicon Valley, working at 🇺🇸 Amazon and Google over the last four years.

That career shift taught me a lot about how companies build and scale their brands—and the stark cultural contrasts between legacy luxury and Big Tech. Here are a few takeaways from both sides of the table:

🇪🇺 Luxury Brand Mindset
• Heritage is everything. LVMH (Dior, BVLGARI), Hermès, and Chanel weren’t built overnight—they’ve had centuries to refine brand equity.
• Culture shapes the product and the workplace:
• 🇩🇪 German efficiency (BMW, Porsche, Audi)
• 🇨🇭 Swiss precision (Rolex, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin)
• 🇫🇷 French creativity (Dior, Hermès, Chanel)
• These companies master aspiration and emotional connection. Brand equity is built slowly, with storytelling and scarcity.
• LVMH, for example, hit $93B in revenue in 2023. These aren’t niche brands—they compete at the scale of Big Tech.

🇺🇸 Big Tech Reality
• Most tech giants (FAANG) are under 30 years old. There’s no time for century-long storytelling.
• Growth > Brand. It’s all about speed, scalability, performance marketing, and conversion rates.
• Amazon generated $575B in revenue in 2023; Google (Alphabet) brought in $324B. These companies grew fast—without the luxury of slow brand-building.

But here’s the twist:
As tech matures, brand becomes a critical differentiator. Even performance-driven companies are realizing that long-term value is driven by trust, emotion, and consistency.

✨ Just look at Apple: it merges sleek brand identity with retail excellence and product performance—and consistently ranks as the world’s most valuable brand.

My takeaway:
The future of marketing lies in the balance—between long-term brand equity and short-term growth performance. Companies that master both will lead.