Luxury goods is an attractive sector. High end, non essential consumer products that are household names for most people, even though you may never own any of them.

Ashley McDonnell has spent the last 6 years working in Paris at the crossroads of digital and retail within the fashion and beauty industries. She began her career with a luxury e-retailer, and then joined LVMH Group as a digital analyst, working with luxury houses such as Louis Vuitton and Fendi to drive digital transformation.

If you don't know who LVMH are, you'll know their brands. The initials LVMH stands for "Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy" and holds brands like Moet, Krug, Dom Perignon, Kenzo, Marc Jacobs, Bulgari, TAG, Tiffany & Co... you get the picture. 

Ashley also led digital strategy for Dior's Travel Retail division within LVMH, focusing on capturing the opportunity of Global Chinese Travellers. She's now at Google, managing full-funnel digital projects for the world’s leading luxury brands - helping brands achieve excellence through technology.

We talk about sustainability, advertising, how marketing works in luxury and how you end up in Paris from Galway. 

We've got two T.O.P.T.I.P.S in this episode, with Emma Burdett and Danielle Phillips sharing their knowledge. Emma talks about reviews on Google My Business and Danielle talks about internal comms as staff come back from COVID furlough. 

I pick up the baton from Dan and keep talking COVID, but from a marketing perspective. My plea: focus. There's so much noise to DO MORE STUFF, but focus your marketing and magic will happen. 

Big thanks as always to our sponsor, Moyee Coffee. I'm a big fan of the coffee and the work they're doing to help farmers in Ethiopia and Kenya achieve a living income.  Please check them out. 

You can find Ash on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Some of the people and projects that were mentioned on the show were:

Georgi Dan making fashion from recycled inner tubes

Northern Irish designer JW Anderson

Loewe Spanish designer

Ash’s book recommendations are:

The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by J N Kapferer and Vincent Bastien

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark

T.O.P.T.I.P from Emma Burdett

Emma is Web & Digital Marketing Manager for Visit Belfast in, well, Belfast. She’s talking about Google My Business, more here.

Emma is on Twitter and LinkedIn and is always great fun to talk to.

T.O.P.T.I.P from Danielle Phillips

Danielle is the Founder at Inside Out Communications Consulting.

Danielle is on LinkedIn you should look her up.

Andi Jarvis

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