Hype vs Halo

In crowded markets, specialists win

Bernard Arnault is the master of hype.

For the past decade, Arnault has been hiring creative directors and shepherding collaborations that were sure to generate maximum global attention. 2017 alone has been named the year of the hype and, true to its name, it was when Louis Vuitton brought Jeff Koons bag back and became friends with Supreme after years of litigation. In 2018, Virgil Abloh joined Louis Vuitton Men and Kim Jones joined Dior Men, ushering the new streetwear-luxury era of much-coveted drops. From there, things sped up, pandemic notwithstanding. The latest hype has been this winter’s reissue of the Murakami bag. A few months ago, there was a line for it in Louis Vuitton’s SoHo store.

In contrast, Hermès hasn’t created a single new hit in 42 years, since the launch of its Birkin bag. The brand is still riding on Birkin’s halo. But Hermès recently overtook LVMH as the most valuable luxury company. In the context of the luxury industry’s growth, this is meaningful: in 2003, global sales of personal luxury goods reached $400bn, up from $100bn in 2000, according to Bain. But during 2024, this growth has reversed, and the value of the ten most valuable luxury companies fell by more than a tenth.

Hype versus halo is a matter of strategy.

Hype means creating intense publicity and promotion meant to spur excitement and anticipation around a brand’s products or services. It is a preferred strategy across culture industries, from entertainment to food, music, art, design, fashion and luxury to consumer packaged goods and travel.

SS19 RGB Keepall Bandouliere 50 by Virgil Abloh

Hype originated in the streetwear culture, where limited-edition drops created social and cultural capital around scarcity and were the language of the subculture. Supreme was known for its Thursday 11am drops of a precious few new products, a strategy borrowed from Japanese streetwear culture. Fashion brands followed, with Moncler Genius making collaborations a backbone of its brand strategy and many LVMH and Kering brands riding on the wave of collaborations as a way to drive hype and sales of its more affordable products, like sneakers, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and accessories.

But hype and sales don’t always go together.

VF Corp sold Supreme at a loss in 2024 to EssilorLuxottica. What once was a genuine way to generate social and cultural capital, signal scarcity, create FOMO, and drive sales, led to consumer fatigue.

For hype to work, a brand needs to be strong.

Hype around Miu Miu’s crystal panties and its boat shoes is sustained by everything else that this brand does: its’ book pop-ups, its constantly fresh Lotta Volkova styling, the scarcity of items and sizing in its stores, the creativity of its advertising, the septuagenarian on its social media, the halo of its runway. Miu Miu comparative sales doubled in the first three quarters of 2024.

In contrast, when a brand keeps releasing TikTok videos that garner hundreds of thousands of views, but whose retail environment is overcrowded with product, visual merchandising is poor, items are always 40% off, and advertising is printed on cheap material, hype does not translate to sales: it is wasted in the present and leads to diminishing returns on consumer attention in the future.

For hype to work, a product needs to be strong.

Hype creates anticipation for a product or service, unavoidably inflating their value and desirability. Products have to either be of a higher quality than a brand’s usual

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