French automaker Peugeot Citroen has had a rough time financially in recent years and isn’t expecting to turn a profit again till 2015, according to German newspaper Wlt am Sonntag. Meanwhile, the French government promised assistance to the company last month and “the car maker has also agreed to withhold dividend payouts, as well as postpone share buybacks and performance bonuses to top executives,” according to Fox Business. 

What may help the automaker get back into the black is a partnership with General Motors that Peugeot’s head, Maxim Picat, says is still moving forward with the Opel brand: "Our cooperation is going as planned," he said, according to a translation by Fox Business. "As we said, we will build cars together using four shared platforms."

One thing Peugeot should pay extra attention to when it designs its next round of cars: how much exhaust it puts out. The New York Times reports that Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe has “angered vintage car owners and motorist groups and raised concerns among those who say they cannot afford new cars” by asking to ban vehicles made before 1997 to help reduce air pollution. The plan could affect 367,000 automobiles, including France's "landmark" Citroën DS, named "the most beautiful car ever" by car designers in 2009.Continue reading...

Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2013 women's ready-to-wear show in Paris on Oct. 3rd raised eyebrows not only with the unusual choice of venue (a bank of escalators at the Louvre) but the fact that there was nary a logo in sight. There were plenty of checks, splats and other dramatic, bold and graphic elements in a retro nod to the mod 60's ("joie sixties") from designer Marc Jacobs, but no iconic LV logo anywhere for the luxury brand. The fashion show was also covered live on Instagram and streamed worldwide via Facebook. Check it out, so to speak, below.Continue reading...

Paris to Shanghai, by train. The concept alone dredges up an atmosphere of yesteryear, when Orient Express-style train travel was the luxury way to travel. And what two cities summon that fabulous yesteryear better than Paris and Shanghai, a city once hailed as "Paris of the East?"

That nostalgic sentiment is what Louis Vuitton is tapping into for its new campaign, "Louis Vuitton Express" — which kicked off this week with a teaser video, "Paris to Shanghai by Train by The Selby," — as the digital extension of an event marketing campaign that's rolling online, on YouTube and on Facebook from the brand's French HQ to its new China HQ.

But who or what, you might ask, is "The Selby?" And will "The Selby" be enough to get Vuitton back in the good graces of Chinese luxury buyers who have recently come to treat the the brand kind of like locomotive travel — a relic of the past?Continue reading...

Food trucks have been fanning out across America, as the graphic above from the National Restaurant Association shows. But they're also starting to span the globe, bringing gustatory delight to Paris and London as artisanal food trucks, such as the Cantine California food truck in Paris, dispense tacos stuffed with organic meat (and brand USA) overseas.Continue reading...

BMW this week launched a concept called Future Retail with the grand opening of its first new BMW Brand Store in a luxe pocket of metropolitan Paris this week. It also signalled that the brand is stepping up investments in its dealers and retail network to better equip them to win BMW's worldwide fight with Audi for luxury-vehicle sales leadership — and in the United States, with Mercedes-Benz for upscale-segment supremacy.

The Brand Store aims to be more than 'just' a brand experience or halo outlet. Much more important to BMW strategically will be how it executes the Future Retail concept in its dealerships worldwide. Among other things, the brand plans to increase the number of contact points with customers and prospects, increase the services and benefits offered in its retail channels, and enhance the retail experience "at all touch points."Continue reading...

Above, watch a guided tour through the "Louis Vuitton - Marc Jacobs" exhibition that opened during Paris Fashion Week and runs through September 16th.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is sure doing everything it can to promote itself - even if it means projecting a free light show onto a huge skyscraper with musical guest deadmau5, or constructing a 32 foot version of the phone. (Not to mention the 55 foot Windows phone put up in New York's Herald Square.)

The towering Lumia 800 is currently on view in Paris, France, on the city's famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées (where residents and visitors can also check out Absolut's subtle outdoor advertising). This is the first Windows Phone that Nokia has produced, and it's hard to speculate how well it will do until Nokia releases their Q4 financial results.Continue reading...

No ink, no paint, and 100% cellulose paper. Too little ingredients for a bus ad for a big brand like ABSOLUT, right? Wrong. Those ingredients are what artist Simon Schubert and the brand's marketers feel best represents purity, or, "ABSOLUT Purity".

ABSOLUT Vodka is featuring the poster, above, in an Avenue de l’Opéra bus shelter in Paris. It consists of a single sheet of blank paper using only folds and shadows playing off lighting. That means no ink, no chlorine, and no color. The dramatic poster is meant to portray the multi-sided bottle the brand produced for holiday imbibing and New Year's ringing in, an eye-catching limited edition gift.

See more of the campaign in the video below:Continue reading...