Gucci and Brioni: creative direction makes or breaks a company

Gucci: the positive example

Gucci was founded by Guccio Gucci in Florence in 1921, and in 1953 it opened its first showroom in New York. In the 1980s it went through a severe crisis caused by a loss of focus across ceramics, home accessories and more. The turning point came between 1991 and 2004, when Domenico De Sole joined on the management side and Tom Ford took over creative direction.

Ford rejuvenated the brand while respecting its heritage, its history. By the end of his tenure sales had multiplied tenfold. Look at the advertising campaigns of the 1990s: vertical photos, the Gucci logo always the same, in white, on a black or a white background, in the centre of the page. That is what gave Gucci its unmistakable style.

It was a company in deep crisis, nowhere near Vuitton. When I wrote the book it had a turnover of 6 billion, 45% more than the year before, and was ready to take on Louis Vuitton.

Brioni: the negative example

Brioni is a great historic company of the very highest level, a dream for men of a certain social standing. Founded in Rome in 1945 with menswear collections for heads of state and film stars, in 1952 it invented the men's fashion show in Florence. In 2007 and 2011 the Luxury Institute in New York named it the most prestigious luxury brand in America. From 1995 to 2012 it dressed James Bond, paying for product placement in the first film with a scene in which a Brioni tailor takes the hero's measurements.

In 2011 came a spectacular stroke of luck: the New York Times led with the summit between Obama and Netanyahu, with a photograph in which Obama's jacket had fallen open. In the foreground you could see the Brioni label, on the front page of the New York Times. A PR hit to carry with you for the next hundred years: you dress presidents, film stars, James Bond. With credentials like these it is hard to go wrong.

After these results, Brioni threw it all away with its choice of a new creative director. They hired Justin O'Shea: a half-Scottish, half-Australian hipster with tattoos, muscles and a beard. The very picture of the brand's heritage and elegance, wouldn't you say? The first thing he did was bring in Metallica as ambassadors. Then the 2016 campaigns, and the collection presented in Paris.

The Corriere's verdict

The day after the presentation, the Corriere della Sera wrote that O'Shea was “the product of a professional standing built on appearances in street-style galleries and on follower counts on social media accounts”, and that “entrusting him with a brand of substance like Brioni is an error of judgement”. The collection, poorly received by the press and by buyers around the world, “highlighted the lack of a plan, beyond the taste expressed in the clothes”.

The consequences were 150 redundancies, 400 possible job cuts across the three factories in Abruzzo, the regional president meeting the unions, and a headline reading: “Not even luxury is safe”. In reality luxury is safe: it is inadequate managers who sink companies. The only ones who gain in a situation like this are the managers who are fired with million-euro payouts and the ambassador who pockets the money. After six months O'Shea was let go.

The mistake isn't the medium. The mistake is changing the brand's identity to win over an audience that is on social media.

The mistake SMEs make too

Why do so many luxury companies struggle with the change brought by the internet and social media? Because very often the old generation is in charge, rightly so, because they are the ones who built them. And the old generation asks: “Why doesn't newspaper advertising work any more?”. So someone explains that they need to be on social media, where the young people are. You, the business owner, go to the marketing agency and often make Brioni's mistake: to talk to young people, you distort your brand's historic positioning.

Brioni's mistake was lowering the target from sixty-year-olds to thirty-year-olds. You can rejuvenate the line while keeping the same client.

You have to speak the language of social media as if it were print: always present yourself in your sharp double-breasted suit with James Bond as your ambassador, simply translated into the languages that suit social media. The fact that young people are on social media doesn't mean Brioni should have Metallica as ambassadors. There are also people aged 45 and over with money on social media. My father, who is 70, is on social media too.

It is one thing not to change your silhouettes and still make the high 1980s shoulder; it is quite another to change your target and codes completely. If Brioni narrows the leg a little because suits are worn more fitted, rejuvenates the line, uses more distinctive fabrics, that is fine: the target stays the same, just a little younger. But if you suddenly change target and become a brand that neither the young hipster identifies with (he doesn't buy Brioni and probably hasn't even heard of it) nor the older man with money (who is faced with a cut he would never wear and ambassadors he is embarrassed by), then that is where the problem lies.

Every company changes over time. I don't make the kitchens I made five years ago. I keep up with the times and try to anticipate them. But it is one thing to do it with judgement, as Gucci did, and another to throw away your heritage. You should make use of it and put it in a position to work today, by updating it.

Back to the roots

After O'Shea, Nina-Maria Nitsche took over creative direction, also without success. At the start of 2019 the Kering group brand started again with a new creative director, Norbert Stumpfl, and the change of course was immediately clear. He brought the brand back home, to Milan Fashion Week, and presented a collection faithful to the brand's DNA, combining new lines and fabrics with the brand's history. In 2020, for the house's 75th anniversary, Brad Pitt became its ambassador with the “Tailoring Legends” campaigns, and since 2018 Brioni has gone back to dressing Hollywood actors at the Oscars: Tom Cruise, Pierce Brosnan, Denzel Washington, Matthew McConaughey.

The brand went back to its roots: it modernised styles and fabrics without overturning its identity. The owners, the same as Gucci's, were not blind: when you manage twelve brands you may end up hiring someone who seems capable, on questionable criteria, and only judge them once they have or haven't delivered results. A sales director, as happened to us too, may do you some damage, but only so much, whereas a creative director's mistakes can lead to 500 redundancies.

Written in 2021 for my book Direct from Milano: the facts and figures are those of the time.