Inside the celebrity and brand partnerships that shaped Vogue World Paris

Anna Wintour and her team have been organising the magazine's flagship annual Vogue World event for the past three years. Launching in New York in 2022, the event will take place in London the following year, before taking place in Paris this June. Vogue World celebrates fashion and culture in spectacular style with live fashion shows held in the heart of the world's most stylish cities.

Despite still being in the early stages of the Condé Nast brand, this year's Vogue World event was significantly bigger in scale and drew more attention. On an overcast Sunday night, 188 athletes, 151 models, 70 dancers and a 40-piece orchestra took over the streets of Paris. The spectacle kicked off with a performance at the Ritz and culminated with 20 international breakdancers taking over Place Vendôme.

The theme of the evening was the evolution of style over the past century, with each decade of fashion being linked to a different sport: the Roaring Twenties was linked to cycling, the elegant mid-century gowns of the 1950s to equestrian events, the leotard-and-Lycra-obsessed 1970s to gymnastics, and the 1990s, known as the Wag Era, to football.

Vogue World, like that other major event, the Met Gala, attracted a ton of celebrities to its glamorous affair. Venus and Serena Williams showed off their star sports power, while FKA Twigs and Bad Bunny gave performances that lit up the night. And the runway? It was a spectacular show, with Sabrina Carpenter, Katy Perry, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Colman Domingo taking the spotlight and wowing fans.

It's a marketer's dream

Bree McKechnie, global senior vice president of Condé Nast Creative, told The Drum: “What Anna has built globally at Vogue World is an entire universe of inspiration — it's a marketer's dream. A big part of this was figuring out which brand partners to bring into this universe, and what stories we could tell authentically.”

Sponsors included eBay, Nike and Coach. Snowboarder Chloe Kim looked flawless in an eBay-sourced outfit, highlighting the platform's “Eternal Eras” campaign. Nike was featured prominently in the athletics section, while A'ja Wilson showed off key pieces styled by Harry Lambert. The event also featured a screening of Coach's creative film, starring Normani, which combines sport and style in a Paris setting.

“It was a great place for us to engage with brands that were interested in celebrating their excellence and championing their heritage and history,” McKechnie explains, “and those were the brands that we thought would be most beneficial to bring into the Vogue world and be a part of it and integrate into it. But it was mostly a content-generating set.”

The live stream was where Vogue was able to create these experiences for their sponsors. After 24 hours, unique views of footage were up 98% year-over-year across markets, and total engagement time was up 36% year-over-year. The event garnered a total of 219 million views across all platforms and markets.

Earned Media vs. Paid Media

In terms of key performance indicators (KPIs), these are huge brands with huge budgets and even bigger expectations for return on investment.

“The majority of our partners were non-endemic,” said Craig Kostelic, Condé Nast's global chief business officer. He explained that while eBay may seem non-endemic at first, by promoting its luxury marketplace it serves as an endemic platform targeting a broader demographic of customers who wouldn't normally consider eBay for luxury purchases.

Kostelic added that from a KPI perspective, Vogue World is focused on integrating paid media KPIs such as impressions, engagement and attention with earned media value, which has been a key priority over the past 12 months.

He added: “More and more media is moving to services like Facebook and Google and the media conversation is really becoming commoditized, so there's more of a disconnect between the value of earned media and the value of paid media. But at the same time, consumers are looking at it all as one thing. [when it shows up on their feeds].

“We're trying to do a better job of moving up the food chain in terms of talent deals and brand ambassadors. Those are things that are happening at the highest levels of the company.”

Overall, Condé Nast aims to integrate talent and media partnerships with earned media value and position them as a key component of marketers' overall brand approach. This upstream focus will enable the company to be seen as a strategic partner rather than just a media option like Facebook or Google, reinforcing its value in the early stages of strategy development.

The art and science of tightrope walking

Selecting brand partners is both an art and a science. Vogue World is extremely selective, making sure the brands they collaborate with are worthy of the event's prominence. McKenney points out the importance of maintaining the purity of Vogue's editorial vision while also pushing the boundaries to meet the diverse needs of its audience. There's a fine line between Vogue's global mindset and local brand expression. This balance is essential to align the brand identities of Vogue and its advertisers, ensuring each collaboration feels authentic and integrated.

“From a business perspective, the US has always been the biggest advertising budget,” says Kostelic, “so we have to find a balance between juggling global and US budgets, while also respecting local cultural expressions and interpretations, because if we just bring American culture to France, we're going to get a negative reaction. That's the tightrope we're always walking.”

The role of talent

Talent selection is another key element of Vogue World's strategy, and of course Condé Nast's extensive connections in the celebrity community are a major advantage, with McKenney highlighting how the dedicated talent team works to find celebrities who match both the event's fashion focus and the brand's marketing goals.

She goes on to say that, for example, eBay wanted to find someone with a new audience that didn't exactly align with Vogue's current readership, and gold medal-winning snowboarder Chloe Kim was a perfect fit.

“She has a story about her first snowboard, which her dad bought on eBay,” McKenney explains, “plus she has an incredible social following. She has a dynamic personality that's an up-and-coming Gen Z person who doesn't have established fashion cred but has a passion for fashion. She wants to understand fashion better and has a playfulness about it, and that was something that our talent team could understand.”

The story will play out in branded cutaways during the livestream and will also appear in the upcoming August issue of Vogue.

McKenney says that playfulness is key and that he feels the brand is trying to move away from the elitist image that pervades the luxury fashion world: “That's what I see with Vogue World right now – being able to wink at some things and having a sense of humour. What it's really built on is that foundation of such confidence in what the brand represents.”

The two hint that a few core partners return each year and conversations begin with them shortly after the event ends. Where next? It's a top secret for now.