Cultural adviser finds money talk too gauche for poetic approach

In the 10 years since he took over the world's largest luxury conglomerate, the French billionaire financier Mr Bernard Arnault has more than doubled the turnover of Moet, Hennessy, Louis Vuitton (LVMH), from Ffr 19.635 billion (£2.35 billion) to Ffr 48 billion last year. But Mr Arnault wanted a new image for the company, not linked to stock market prices, acquisitions and balance sheets.

With this in mind, Mr Arnault hired Mr Jean-Paul Claverie (42) as his adviser. Before joining LVMH eight years ago, Mr Claverie was a councillor to the former Socialist Culture Minister, Mr Jack Lang. In an interview at the group's avenue Montaigne headquarters, Mr Claverie told The Irish Times why he based LVMH's communication strategy on the patronage of art exhibitions, scholarships for young artists and donations to medical research.

Every year, LVMH finances one major art exhibition that is kicked off with a gala dinner for 300 people in the museum where it is held. These exhibitions - Cezanne, Picasso, de La Tour, and, this winter, Millet-Van Gogh - draw hundreds of thousands of visitors from France and around the world. The letters "LVMH" appear discreetly on posters and inside the exhibition.

When he joined the group, Mr Claverie says, "the challenge was to express the institutional identity of LVMH through values that are shared by all of the many subsidiary companies - subsidiaries that make champagne, cognac, perfume, couture clothing, luggage, cosmetics. I proposed to express the values which lie behind the success of the group - heritage, creativity, aesthetics, the art of living - which are also French values. The image of France is very linked to all these companies within our group."

The ancient Roman, Maecenas, devoted his fortune to supporting artists and writers, and his name gave France the word mecenat, meaning patronage.

"Our strategy was to act in a field devoid of economic repercussions," Mr Claverie says, "an area that belongs to the entire French community. Through these actions, the group would reveal what it is, but in a way that fulfils general interests. For us, le mecenat means communicating the culture of our company through culture with a capital `C'."

LVMH is probably the leading corporate mecene in France. Mr Claverie says the concept is difficult to translate. "What we do is not what you call `sponsoring' in English," he says. "For me, sponsoring means actions that are in direct support of something and which have an economic basis such as launching a brand or a product. It is linked to a commercial approach. The word `patronage' would be closer to what we do. But the word I find most appropriate is `philanthropy'."

How much does it cost to organise an exhibition like this year's Millet-Van Gogh at the Musee d'Orsay? Mr Claverie at first declines to answer. "This whole action is intended to develop an identity other than our financial identity," he says. "When you start quoting figures, right away things become less poetic."

But I am interviewing him for the business section of our newspaper, I insist. "It's interesting for the people who read the business section to understand why a company like LVMH, in this area, does not want to communicate in a financial way," he replies. "It's not the kind of communication we are looking for. We don't want people to say, `LVMH spends so many millions for its philanthropic action.' That's not the return we are looking for."

With Ffr 4.5 billion in net profits last year, LVMH can afford to be generous. "These are operations that cost a great deal," Mr Claverie admits. "You can imagine the insurance rates - Van Gogh is the most expensive painter in the world today. The Millet-Van Gogh exhibition cost about Ffr 14 million to organise."

So has LVMH's strategy of devoting its communications effort into patronage paid off? "On the fiscal level, there are certain provisions that allow us to deduct the expenses devoted to these operations, to consider them part of our general expenses or advertising costs," Mr Claverie says.

"But the fiscal advantages linked to patronage in France are not innovative enough, in my opinion, to encourage a company to support culture, humanitarian action, education or the environment - unlike the Anglo-Saxon countries. In the US there is a tradition; the role of the company in society is very different from what we have known in France. In France the state assumes responsibility for a very large part of cultural life."

The most palpable benefit to LVMH, Mr Claverie says, has been internal unity. "It was the means of federating the group, which is made up of very different subsidiaries, economically independent from one another," he adds.

"Each has its own image and commercial approach. You have several brands of champagne, several brands of perfume, several fashion labels. Each must cultivate its individuality, but they must feel like they belong to the same group. The [cultural] action of the holding company was to the advantage of all our subsidiaries. It made them understand that they share a real cultural identity, that the values defended by the holding company were also their own. All the big operations we organise can be used by the subsidiaries individually. They can receive their clients, use them to launch certain products, invite their partners and their employees."

LVMH's prestige patronage also draws attention outside the group, he says. "It pulls together different currents of talent - artists, political people, financiers, our own clients - they establish a relationship with the group that is no longer simply commercial. This is something that is very difficult to evaluate, but which we feel more as the years go by. The world of LVMH truly exists. . . It is important that companies understand they have a real strategic interest in forging links with the cultural world, and that their own interest in this field coincides with that of the general public."