Tesla's Model S P85D
Telsa’s Elon Musk’s disruptive ideas have made him the most searched for CEO, according to research from Digital Luxury Group that ranks luxury leaders based on search engine popularity.
Out of the top 100 list, only 14 are women, and solely two are present in the top 10. However, the percentage of female luxury CEOs is higher than the proportion of women in the same role at a Fortune 500 company, which is around 5 percent.
Digital Luxury Group’s research ranks CEOs from 500 luxury brands and groups based on their popularity in 8.5 million online searches. Data was compiled from January to December of 2014.
Popularity contest
Following the auto entrepreneur, are Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH, followed by Kering’s chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault. LVMH’s Arnault family dominates the top 10 rankings, with Bernard Arnault’s children Delphine (9) and Antoine (6), CEOs of Louis Vuitton and Berluti, the youngest to make the list.
Rounding out the top 10 are Prada’s Miuccia Prada (4), Burberry’s Christopher Bailey (5), Pagani’s Horacio Pagani (7), Tod’s Diego Della Valle (8) and Ferrari’s Luca Cordero di Montezemolo (10).
Image from Digital Luxury Group
The research notes that had Apple senior vice president Angela Ahrendts stayed as CEO of Burberry, she would have ranked four and been the most searched for female luxury leader.
Chanel CEO Maureen Chiquet, in her position since 2007, is one of the fastest movers, now ranking 33rd.
Consumers' online actions can also help brands gauge their popularity.
According to a new report by NetBase, identifying and understanding consumer preferences in relation to luxury brands is one part art and one part science.
Through the rise of social media, luxury brands have been able to engage consumers on a deeper level and gauge sentiment based on these interactions. With millions of comments, retweets and likes occurring daily, brands have unprecedented insight into how consumers think and feel about particular products, campaigns and happenings (see story).