Lessons in Luxury Marketing: Kimberley Wallengren on Coach’s Customer Promise

Her perspective reveals how a global brand balances tradition with innovation, and what other marketers can learn from Coach’s evolving playbook.

1. Protect the physical experience, embrace digital change

Asked about the forces reshaping marketing from AI to retail media to new platforms, Wallengren was clear: the physical experience remains the most important constant. For luxury especially, the feel of a store, the connection with an associate, and the moment of purchase are irreplaceable.

But that doesn’t mean ignoring digital. She pointed to AI-powered search as one of the fastest-moving shifts already altering customer expectations. If discovery increasingly happens through AI-driven queries, then brands must ensure their data, product information, and storytelling are ready to surface in this new environment. The balance is between preserving timeless in-store experiences while preparing digital ecosystems for the AI era.

2. Build holistic measurement across touchpoints

Coach customers move seamlessly between boutiques, wholesale partners, ecommerce sites, and platforms like Amazon. Measuring marketing impact across these journeys is notoriously difficult, but Wallengren noted that Coach has built a sophisticated data network to close gaps.

The brand looks at acquisition, retention, demand, and traffic at both platform and holistic levels. By consolidating data internally and externally, Coach gains a fuller view of how customers actually shop, which channels drive discovery, where purchases close, and what builds long-term loyalty.

The lesson is that luxury cannot afford data blind spots. Even when the experience must feel artful and human, decisions are grounded in analytics that track the real customer journey.

3. Rebalance the funnel: invest in awareness

Wallengren acknowledged that many luxury brands historically over-indexed on performance marketing while under-investing in upper-funnel awareness. Coach, she explained, has been on a multi-year journey to “right size” this balance.

By increasing brand storytelling investment, Coach has seen stronger efficiency at peak periods, because awareness campaigns prime consumers with brand love long before a purchase. Storytelling drives the initial spark; performance marketing closes the loop.

She described this shift as not just tactical but cultural: a recognition that luxury is built on aspiration and purpose, not just clicks.

4. Recognise the hidden halo effect

One of the hardest challenges Wallengren sees is attributing the “halo effect” of brand campaigns across fragmented channels. She pointed to industry research showing how media on Pinterest or Snapchat may eventually drive sales on Amazon but attribution systems often credit the final platform alone.

For Coach, which now sells on Amazon as well, this creates an imperative: to measure influence, not just transactions. Wallengren noted that partnerships and brand activations may feel intangible, but they are crucial for shaping consumer perception. The problem is measurement. “You know in your gut how important they are,” she said, “but it’s really, really hard to prove in an in-period return perspective.”

This is where luxury marketing requires both discipline and conviction: using data where possible, but trusting long-term brand impact even when short-term attribution is incomplete.

5. Keep asking how to measure the unmeasurable

When asked what she would change if she could throw away the funnel and design a new system, Wallengren hesitated to discard current metrics but highlighted experiential and partnership marketing as areas desperately in need of better measurement.

Events, collaborations, and activations define how customers experience Coach beyond the store, but measuring their financial impact is elusive. Is it SMS sign-ups? Data capture? Or something deeper, like brand meaning? Wallengren believes the industry has yet to solve this, but that it will become a defining question for marketers over the next decade.

Closing Reflection

For Kimberley Wallengren, luxury marketing is about protecting constants while embracing change. The store will remain central, but AI search will redefine discovery. Data must be consolidated across wholesale and digital touchpoints. Awareness must be valued alongside performance. And the industry must find better ways to measure brand activations that are clearly powerful but not easily quantifiable.

The lessons for marketers, luxury or otherwise, are clear:

• Respect the physical, prepare for AI.

• Invest in holistic data, not siloed metrics.

• Balance storytelling and performance.

• Trust the halo effect, even when attribution lags.

• Push the industry to measure what matters most.

Coach’s journey shows that luxury brands can remain timeless while staying relevant. The customer promise is the same: to feel seen, inspired, and valued. The methods to deliver that promise, however, are evolving and marketers must evolve with them.

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