Winner of the Grand Prix of the Luxury Agency of the Year, the Helmut agency is one of the actors who are now redrawing the landscape of premium agencies. Its co-founder, Christophe Huck, looks back on the scope of this recognition and the profound changes in the profession, between hybridization of models, creative demand and increased responsibility in the age of AI.
Luxury Journal
What does this Luxury Agency of the Year Award represent to you: a recognition of the distance traveled or a signal on how the agency profession is evolving?
Christophe Huck
This award is above all a recognition. That of a pioneering model that we have built in luxury for almost ten years: a hybrid model, at the crossroads of agency and production, long perceived as singular and now become a standard in the sector. He salutes a decade of commitment to the service of luxury houses, guided from the beginning by a simple conviction: to build fair and demanding stories, and give them an irreproachable form, without ever dissociating thought from execution.
But it is also a sign of a structural transformation. The traditional agency model, long organized by silos and based on a rigid customer-agency relationship, is gradually giving way to more agile, more specialized structures, capable of acting as true partners and intervening with precision at every stage of the value chain. This approach has always been ours. It now finds a particular resonance in the age of AI, by the increased need for support expressed by brands.
Luxury Journal
How would you describe the state of luxury agencies in 2025: which transformations do you think are the most structuring today for the sector?
Christophe Huck
We are going through a period of fruitful tension.
On the one hand, an unprecedented acceleration of tools, formats and temporalities. On the other hand, a growing need for meaning, coherence and depth in a luxury sector in full questioning. The irruption of AI imposes, in turn, a complete proofreading of value chains. In this context, the agencies that will prosper will be those capable of reconciling heritage and innovation, performance and desire, speed and requirement.
Luxury Journal
Does the emergence of very agile agencies, 100% AI and low cost, change the expectations of brands, and how does this redefine the role of premium agencies?
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It is a period of extraordinary emulation. It has never been easier to produce an image in a few minutes. But this facility is accompanied by a saturation of content that, too often, hits the eye more than they raise it.
Luxury, on the contrary, is part of the long time. It takes years of experience to understand the DNA of a secular house, its culture, its relationship to detail.
In this context, AI is neither a threat nor a promise in itself. It is a powerful tool that imposes an increased responsibility for the look and choice. The role of premium agencies is then to preserve just creativity: to transform technological power into inhabited, singular and desirable stories, without giving in to ease or standardization.
It is in this logic that we developed T.AI.LOR MADE, a new manufacturing process for our "Content factory" but without ever dissociating it from the on-measurement and the uniqueness of the brands.
Luxury Journal
For you, which skill or posture will be the most decisive for a luxury agency in the coming years in order to remain a reference partner for homes?
Christophe Huck
The essence of high value-added agencies does not change.
Their role remains to bring an external view, a vision and an ability to think differently. In a context of increasing internalization, the agency remains this space of perspective and creative freedom, capable of offering new readings, bold biases and "out of the box" solutions. More than a service provider, we act as a partner to strengthen internal teams and enrich their ability to create, project and produce accurately.
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