LVMH turns out Burning Man like a Cheerleader just off the bus from Omaha...

Major cultural no no here. You’d think they would have learned from the Veuve disaster in New Zealand:

In this instance, Krug, a centuries-old luxury champagne house, and its publicity machine, staged and hosted an elaborate dinner party at the trash fence on Friday night of the 2011 event. Pre-event, Krug’s PR agency pitched members of the media to photograph and report on the staged dinner for publications such as Town & Country and W Magazine. They invited society bloggers to the “exclusive” champagne dinner with the expectation of getting even more coverage, and pro photogs to shoot it. And it worked. The organizers of this event brought paid photographers to the playa and had them falsely register with Media Mecca saying they were there to cover general art and playa happenings, instead of telling the truth; that they were there to act as representatives of Krug – obviously knowing that if they had told the truth, they would not have been allowed to photograph. They then pulled the dinner off entirely under the radar, had the dinner covered both by their captive media and the general media, and managed to get product placement articles published.

sounds like they are not invited back!

Shrug.

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Whatever. The only reason Krug would even step foot in burning man is for something like this for a staged photoshoot.

Not sure what the cultural no no is. Not like this will impact the Krug market share that must have been so expansive at burning man.

What’s wrong with cheerleaders from Omaha?

if the reports of them leaving the trash behind is accurate, that’s not cool - otherwise, looks like a great spot for an offline!

Oh no!!!

Yes, if you can handle a lot of really loud techno music blasting all around you.

but lots of naked people

hairy naked people

Non commericalizaion, huh?

Tickets were $210 to $360 a pop. 50K people on the low end was $10 million. The event is all about money, maybe not corporate money, but money none-the-less.

I agree with Bill. I have no interest in going to Burning Man, but I’m surrounded by fans of the event here in Marin. My wife told me about this yesterday, she was appalled, but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stand it. She told me that none of the Burning Man people will buy Krug again…I reminded her that your average Burning Man person doesn’t know what Krug is. My take is that it was brilliant LVMH marketing, right down to leaving their trash…quite fitting with the “sense of entitlement” crowd. I’m appalled at the trash, but it certainly has grabbed some headlines. As for the neo-Nazism of the Burning Man “rule” people, there is SO much money involved. In my town, every year there is Burning Man shop, and the hardware store has a big banner proclaiming “Burning Man Supply Central”. Many, many people are making money off Burning Man, and it sounds like the sacredness of it all probably wore off once they passed the 10k attendance threshold. If they want that sacredness to return, they probably need to blow the whole thing up and start something new. BUT…they’re not doing that, rather they are petitioning the BLM to allow them to expand their use permit so they can have MORE than 50k people. And the rules about pictures are hilarious…they want to control everything. Are you kidding me?? Get over it.

I’m disappointed, and wonder how much, if any, influence Olivier and the winery itself had with this decision. We had several conversations during the Berserkers Telluride event about the whole Cristal market, and if Krug would want to be associated with rap music, and the overwhelming response from Olivier was ‘hell no’. He even talked about it at some length during his presentation. This is quite counter of what we were told.

I could be wrong, but since Krug sold to LVMH I thought Olivier was nothing more than the face of their marketing arm. Travels to location to location showing off the Krug brand but the family doesn’t have anymore say in the decisions anymore.

It would be really interesting to see some demographic info on Burning Man attendee’s. I know a hell of a lot of Silicon Valley engineers attend every year and they have some $'s to spend…

We have LOTS of customers from the entertainment / internet / fashion / music industries who go and they have plenty of disposable $$$.

I go every other year, (or so) and have a lot of fun… but it’s actually cheaper to just go on a regular vacation…

no shame…? its sad. hate it when cultural events such as this are commodified.

+1

It dawned on me that they were taking a page out of the Gallo marketing book by leaving the trash behind just like when Gallo scattered empty Thunderbird bottles on skid row to promote their new “wine”.