Fractional CMO for Luxury & Lifestyle Brands — External Marketing Direction
You lead an ambitious luxury or lifestyle brand — but without a Chief Marketing Officer in place, global brand marketing defaults to urgency. Strategic decisions pile up unanswered. Agencies pitch without direction. And the brand equity you have worked to build quietly erodes under the pressure of day-to-day operations.
I step in as your fractional CMO: a senior bilingual consultant, entirely dedicated to your brand. Available by the half-day, full day or week, in Paris, Geneva or remotely — driving brand strategy across French, Swiss and international markets.
Without a senior marketing lead, consumer insights rarely translate into strategic decisions. Cultural relevance and brand heat are not byproducts of good products. They are the result of clear strategic leadership, and the first things to suffer when that leadership is absent.
A brand without structured marketing leadership makes communication decisions reactively, responding to agency pitches, short-term pressures and the loudest priorities of the moment. The result: scattered actions, a brand identity that drifts, and investments that are difficult to evaluate or justify.
Hiring a full-time CMO is a significant commitment in time, cost and process. And often, it is not what you actually need. What you need is a clear strategic vision, decisive priorities and an experienced external perspective on what truly matters.
That is exactly what a fractional CMO engagement delivers: access to senior-level marketing and brand expertise, in a flexible format calibrated to your reality and your priorities.
A brand is only as strong as its weakest touchpoint. Across markets, languages and channels, the risk of dilution is constant, and rarely visible until the damage is done. As your fractional CMO, I act as brand guardian: the senior voice that ensures every campaign, every brief and every deliverable upholds the integrity of your brand identity, wherever it appears and whoever produces it. Global brand coherence is not a constraint. It is the foundation on which long-term brand equity is built.
Areas of guidance
Your brand identity is the non-negotiable thread running through every decision.
Every engagement is bespoke. These are the dimensions I work across most frequently.
Global brand strategy & positioning
From positioning recalibration to brand storytelling frameworks, I establish the strategic foundation before any activation begins, ensuring every message serves a coherent, long-term brand narrative.
Marketing plan & channel prioritisation
Defining your marketing priorities and building a structured omnichannel campaign plan adapted to your objectives, market and resources. What to say, where to say it, in what order, and how to ensure each channel reinforces the same brand story.
Editorial marketing calendar & content strategy
Structuring your brand's annual editorial rhythm: defining the key messages, campaign moments and content priorities that give your communications coherence across the year. From the global marketing calendar to channel-specific content frameworks, I ensure your brand storytelling is consistent, intentional and aligned with your strategic positioning.
Project management & strategic oversight
New offer launch, website redesign, international expansion, repositioning: I bring cross-functional leadership to structuring marketing projects that require both a holistic vision and rigorous coordination, managing timelines, stakeholders and deliverables without a dedicated internal team.
Agency, talent & creative ecosystem management
Creative agencies, studios, freelancers, developers: I supervise and coordinate your entire supplier ecosystem, ensuring brand consistency at every stage. I act as the single point of contact translating your vision into precise operational briefs and validating all deliverables.
The acuity of someone who has worked inside the world's most exclusive maisons
The rigour of an in-house CMO. The agility of an independent consultant.
Before establishing my independent practice, I held senior roles in some of the world's leading luxury and fashion houses — Chanel, The Kooples, IWC Schaffhausen and Chloé (Richemont Group), across Paris, Zurich and international markets. I bring a global-to-local approach: ensuring brand coherence at the strategic level while empowering markets and teams to localize with intention.
Those environments instilled a methodological rigour and organisational discipline I have never relinquished: clear processes, precise briefs and deliverables, non-negotiable brand consistency at every stage. It is the standard I bring to every engagement. I have also worked alongside smaller brands alongside founders building from scratch or agencies seeking specialist sector expertise. That experience has taught me the genuine flexibility that independent structures require: adapting the level of intervention to available resources, moving forward without a dedicated team, prioritising with discernment when everything feels urgent. What the luxury brands taught me, above all, is that brand equity is not a byproduct of good work, it is the deliberate result of consistent strategic decisions, made at every level, over time. That is the standard I bring to every fractional engagement.
It is this dual perspective, the rigour of the grandes maisons, the agility of the independent field, that allows me to act as a fractional CMO with a genuine 360° view: guaranteeing both the strategic coherence of your brand and its concrete deployment, whatever the size of your organisation. No junior team on your account. No report delivered without follow-through. One senior consultant, entirely dedicated to your brand, who knows your industry from the inside and speaks the language of both French luxury and international markets.
Featured in Forbes France
Justine Grosset: Rethinking Brand Strategy for a Changing Luxury Landscape
Forbes France dedicated a portrait to my approach to strategic consulting and marketing direction — a vision of brand as a system, at the crossroads of identity, narrative and customer experience. The feature appears in the Forbes France — Quintessence du Luxe edition.
Custom formats
A format that works around your pace and priorities
The fractional CMO engagement adapts to your organisation and the challenges of the moment. No imposed structure, we define together the most relevant rhythm of intervention.
- You are the founder of an independent luxury or lifestyle brand and you are carrying marketing decisions alongside all your other responsibilities. You need an experienced external perspective to structure your strategy, brief your suppliers and move forward with coherence in French, English or both.
- You are a CEO or CFO of a luxury company without a CMO in post, by choice, in transition or while recruiting. You need operational marketing direction and integrated marketing planning that drives sustained results, takes ownership of strategic decisions and ensures brand consistency.
You are scaling into new markets, or preparing to. Your brand has a strong identity at home, but you need a senior marketing voice to ensure it translates beyond your home territory: culturally resonant, strategically consistent, and adapted to the expectations of international audiences without losing what makes it distinctly yours.
If you lead a foreign luxury brand looking to enter the French or francophone market, I bring the inside knowledge you need: the cultural codes, the editorial standards, the network and the strategic fluency that make the difference between a brand that lands and one that doesn't. And if your target is any other market, the codes of French luxury — rigour, restraint, narrative depth — remain one of the most transferable strategic references in the world. I help you apply them with intention.
- Half-day
For a focused strategic review, a positioning check, a supplier brief or a decision that needs arbitration. A flexible format, available at short notice.
- Full day
For deeper work on a structuring topic: marketing plan, communication audit, project framing, team workshop.
- Week or extended engagement
For intensive support on a structuring project — new offer launch, repositioning, international expansion — or a regular presence across several weeks.
- How :
On-site in Paris or Geneva, or remote — in French and/or English, adapted to your team and your market.
Let's talk about your project
Every fractional CMO engagement begins with a conversation to understand your context, your priorities and define together the most appropriate format.