Profile: Richemont’s regional marketer Nicolas Brindjonc

While most marketers are occupied handling a single brand, Nicolas Brindjonc has 15 to contend with. As regional director of marketing services at Swiss-based luxury goods holding company Richemont, Brindjonc acts as custodian for an impressive portfolio of high-end brands, among them Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, Alfred Dunhill, Montblanc and Lancel, as well as Richemont’s sole Asian acquisition, Shanghai Tang.

Brindjonc is a 17-year veteran at Richemont and its subsidiaries. His first exposure to the company came when he joined the IT department of Cartier in Paris. From his tech beginnings, Brindjonc worked across various roles within the company, becoming involved with the marketing department in 1996. Following stints in Moscow and London, he arrived in Hong Kong in 2008 where he found himself in charge of a number of related and yet somewhat disconnected brands. 

“I initiated a monthly marketing breakfast where all the Richemont brands could meet and exchange ideas and information,” he says. “At the inaugural meeting, I was surprised to be introducing people for the very first time.”

Brindjonc’s role within the Richemont stable is similar to that of a family head, giving support and guidance to the children but also making sure they are able to operate independently. “The brands will come to me when they need a referee because I am neutral,” he adds. “What we want to do for Richemont is to avoid any conflict and if we have conflict to resolve it. To fight together is also very important.”

Although keen to emphasise the importance of each brands’ independence, Brindjonc nonetheless works to ensure they are leveraging their collective strength - whether this be in shared market research, commercial negotiations or media buys. “For instance, when we have a media co-ordination meeting everybody is in the same room and we share the same level of intelligence, but of course it is very difficult when you have the communication for Cartier and the communication for Roger Dubuis -  they are very different.”

Brindjonc has a region-wide remit, but finds much of his time is tied up with specific markets. And while he identifies Singapore and South Korea as “interesting projects”, it is China that offers his brands the real opportunities. According to Richemont’s latest financials, Asia-Pacific is now the company’s fastest-growing region. Sales in Asia surged 57 per cent to US$1.03 billion in the last three months of 2010, mainly on the back of China’s luxury consumers. 

In terms of marketing strategy in China, he believes brands must start with a bricks and mortar presence. “A flagship is the first tool for communication. This is your visibility, the first experience with your brand. So it is not just for business and retail, a boutique is for both communication and
experience.”

Brindjonc says that for all but a select few luxury brands in China, this visibility is key to success. But given the global rush for the deep pockets of Chinese luxury consumers, creating awareness is not easy. “This is the reason why the communications and media market in China is among the most expensive in the world,” he says. “Everyone is transferring their marketing budgets to China and, as Chinese people can be very opportunistic, they know how to play this kind of business.”

Even within Richemont itself, competition for the best media spots and most prestigious locations is fierce. “When you are part of a family you have to accept some rules,” he notes. “So okay, Cartier is the bigger brand, so it will also have the best media position. Some brands may complain but at the end of the day everyone is happy with the money as it is group money, not Cartier’s.”

Brindjonc’s biggest challenge in China, though, and one that becomes especially apparent as the Richemont brands move out of top-tier cities and into the provinces, is market knowledge. “We have no rational information about China today,” he says. “There are some gurus who tell us tomorrow it will be wet, but that is not enough. The only information we have is about circulation. But I meet media every week and they all have the same presentation - ‘I reach the CEOs, I reach the rich people’ - and I cannot see any differentiation between them.”

Brindjonc’s response has been to create a China barometer survey, whereby the company considers each media outlet as a brand and surveys consumers’ perceptions and attitudes to these brands. 

This year will also see the launch a semiotic survey in China that will look at consumer’s sub-conscious interpretations of advertising. “We will show campaigns to designers, artists, teachers and more and ask what they feel, what they see. This will be about generating greater understanding and learning how to send a better local message.”

Speaking of messaging, Brindjonc is especially passionate about digital marketing, which may reflect his IT background. While noting that some luxury brands have been reluctant to shift budgets into the online space, he argues that it is something that cannot be ignored. 

“If we ask ourselves whether digital fits with the brand, that is wrong. We have to deal with digital, it is part of the environment. To refuse digital is like saying I refuse electricity.”

The digital challenge for luxury brands, he says, is learning how to do it well. He points to his experience of eating in restaurants where fellow diners take photos of their meals with their smartphones. “If it is good or bad, in one minute they share this information with their friends and connections. We will have to deal with the same reaction to our boutiques. If people have a bad experience, they will quickly share.”

At the same time, he understands why some brand marketers may be nervous to experiment with digital. “Luxury brands are totally scared of blogs and digital communications because they feel they are losing control of the DNA of the brand. And the DNA is the most important thing for a luxury brand. If you say Cartier is not a jeweller but a leisure brand, you lose it. So we want to control the image better, but we have to face up to e-reputation; we have to deal with this.” 

To this extent, Brindjonc has been keen to improve digital understanding within the Richemont brands, bringing in digital agencies and consultants to pitch their ideas and strategies to the various senior brand marketers. “I wanted to introduce the group to digital so I said okay, I will bring in some new ideas, some digital vendors and if you want to work with someone, you can choose. Nothing compulsory - I just bring you new ideas, new suppliers, which is one of the functions of the group.”

Brindjonc has a somewhat detached relationship with agencies, digital or otherwise, reflecting perhaps the independence of the various brands. Creatively, there is no single agency relationship, which he says is another way of building differentiation within the company. 

For its media buying in the region, Richemont works exclusively with Starcom, and while Brindjonc is quick to praise the Publicis Groupe agency as a “supplier”, he says the challenge is involving the agency in a partnership. “They must be more and more proactive,” he says. “We always have some conflict but that’s people; it’s human. For me, this is a good relationship because a relationship without conflict is not good; it is like the people who bring milk to the door, where the only relationship you have is with the bottle.”

This article was originally published in the February issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.