A bottle of the same fragrance, worn for decades, helped one LVMH employee reconnect with the work when the job became frustrating. That story is one of 39 interviews behind a Lund University study asking a simple question: can a company’s brand help people find meaning in jobs that do not involve designing or making its products?
Organizational researcher Rachel Waldo says the answer can be yes. Her dissertation examines employees across luxury houses within LVMH, the group whose name stands for Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Waldo’s central idea is “brand enchantment”: the way workers form an emotional bond with a brand by taking on and keeping alive the meanings attached to it. Those meanings can include craftsmanship, creativity, heritage, beauty, exclusivity and prestige.
The people Waldo interviewed held a range of roles. Many were not designers or makers. They worked in areas such as law, marketing and administration. Yet the brand’s story could help them see daily tasks as part of something larger, or make work feel more enjoyable and less routine. Waldo calls this experience “brand-enchanted meaningful work”: a sense of purpose drawn not only from the job itself, but also from what the brand represents and the feelings it brings out.
One interviewee, identified as Mathieu, held a senior sales role. He had felt attached to the brand’s products since he was young and still wore the same fragrance decades later. When work brought frustration, he looked to the house’s haute couture designs for inspiration. To him, they showed the founder’s artistic vision and skill. Waldo says these encounters helped Mathieu reconnect with the brand’s glamorous world and face work challenges and disappointments.
But the interviews did not show employees simply accepting a company’s polished image. Workers could value a brand’s ideals while also noticing when business choices clashed with them. Maelle, who worked in packaging development for a luxury wine and spirits house, described frustration with cost-cutting and mass-market thinking. These seemed at odds with the brand’s promise of craftsmanship, rarity and excellence.
Still, Maelle felt strongly connected to what she called the brand’s exceptional know-how and production expertise. Learning about the products’ history and how they were made helped her see her own work as contributing to the brand’s heritage and success, even when her daily tasks were less glamorous.
Waldo’s research adds the brand itself to the sources often studied in connection with meaningful work, such as job design, leadership, personal values and relationships at work. The findings suggest that a company’s stories can shape how employees understand their contribution, while also leaving room for doubt and disagreement when practice falls short of ideals.
As employers compete for workers through purpose, identity and values, Waldo’s study points to a question beyond why customers feel attached to brands: what makes employees feel connected, too?