Interluxe Group acquires adMixt in bid to marry events with performance marketing for luxury brands
Interluxe Group, a luxury marketing agency that works with over 250 brands ranging from Rolls-Royce to The Four Seasons, is deepening its focus on performance marketing as agency expectations evolve for luxury brands.
The firm, which focuses on events and media, has acquired adMixt, a performance marketing agency that works primarily with digitally-native brands like Westman Atelier and Mizzen + Main. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Nick Van Sicklen, founder and CEO of Interluxe Group, said that while the agency has “dabbled” in performance marketing before, it’s really acquiring a new capability with this acquisition. Interluxe Groups consists of a few different arms: North & Warren, which focuses on luxury media and digital marketing; Quinn, which does strategic communications; and Interluxe Groups, which manages experiential activations. As an example, Interluxe Group works with Range Rover on its Range Rover House pop-ups, “inspired by a location that embodies modern luxury,” like an après-ski-inspired house in Park City.
AdMixt describes itself as a “tech-enabled” performance marketing agency, as it has built its own software that buys ads and measures performance for all of the major tech platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, Snap and Reddit. The pitch, from both Van Sicklen and adMixt CEO Kevin Simonson, is that luxury brands will want online and offline marketing strategies to live together.
“Luxury brands today don’t want disconnected agency partners,” Daniella Vitale, chief executive officer of Ferragamo Americas and an Interluxe Group board member, said in an emailed statement. “They want teams that can bring together storytelling, experiences, media, and performance in a way that feels seamless and connected.”
Van Sicklen said in an interview with Modern Retail that the big industry shift that’s driving this acquisition is that “so many premium and luxury brands are facing a really big challenge, which is that affluent customers are becoming harder to reach and harder to engage, and they’re just very fragmented.”
For starters, he said Meta and Google max out the household income level a brand can target at around $150,000-$200,000.
“While that is affluent in a lot of considerations, if you’re selling a Four Seasons residence for $7 million or you’re selling a luxury timepiece for over $150,000, you need a very different type of audience,” he said.
So the challenge for luxury brands, then, is that they know that paid social is important to reaching more new customers, but they don’t always know how to reach those customers.
AdMixt and Interluxe Group both have proprietary technology — Interluxe has its own data technology platform, Optima, that powers its ad targeting, which aids in this.
There are also some unique considerations when working with luxury brands specifically. Many of them like to keep a tight leash on their creativity and how their brand shows up on different platforms.
“Premium and luxury brands often struggle in performance marketing because the platforms want creative diversification that includes user-generated or lo-fi digital assets like video,” Simonson said. So, he thinks there’s a big opportunity in Interluxe Group using its events to shoot UGC that’s better suited to luxury brands and improve their digital performance.
There are other tailwinds that Van Sicklen and Simonson think work in Interluxe Group’s favor. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it backlash to AI, but [there’s] just a consumer desire to have more experiences [because of AI],” Simonson said.
Alex Greifeld, an e-commerce growth advisor and a former marketing director at Tapestry Brands, said there are a couple of big challenges luxury brands have historically faced when investing more in performance marketing. The first is properly measuring its incrementality. Especially for brands that are already household names, “they immediately start seeing amazing in-platform results because there is so much awareness in the marketplace — but it doesn’t mean those ads are actually doing anything for the business,” she said.
The second is contending with the lack of creative control. For example, there’s a risk of an ad for a luxury handbag running immediately after one for a fungus cream.
She thinks the idea of blending experiential and performance marketing is more of a “cutting-edge idea.” In recent years, she said, a lot of brands have been bolstered by macroeconomic conditions. Yes, sustained inflation has hurt low- and middle-income consumers, but high-end shoppers have continued to spend. In turn, she said she’s seen luxury brands focus more on demand capture, such as by opening new stores or expanding distribution. But she thinks experiential will become a bigger focus for luxury brands in the next three to five years.
Van Sicklen, for his part, positions the new Interluxe Group as an agency that’s well-suited to meet the needs of luxury brands as macroeconomic conditions continue to evolve. “Not only can we produce a beautiful event, but I think what makes Interluxe unique is we can also help drive the right prospects and the right audiences to fill the room,” he said.
“The luxury customer, the affluent consumer, has become more and more important to every single partner that we talk to,” he added. “Whether you’re a watch brand or a hotel or a tourism destination — people want the higher spenders — the people who can travel farther, stay longer and spend more.”