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Marklives recently ran an interview with Gareth Leck of Joe Public who discusses how local brands are opting for a quick sell over long-term brand building. A very familiar debate that i’ve certainly had with clients more often over the last year. I just don’t get why the two are always at odds: marketing is about commerce and we’re all paid to increase sales. The choice is just do you want to play the short game or the long game. In the short game you focus everything on shifting units now – you run competitions linked to purchases, you discount and you advertise on price. In the long game you try and build an emotional connection between your products and the consumer and certainly the results can be less immediatly tangible but i’m firmly on the side of the long game.
There are brands that succeed using short-term approach of course and they produce pretty rotten marketing (certain restaurant chains, supermarkets and local clothing retailers spring to mind). My take on this is that they are succeeding despite their poor marketing not because of it – and these brands are very susceptible to cultural shifts and more savvy competition because they have very little real emotional connection with their consumers. Also when the campaign of discounting and promos is over there is little longterm connection with people to keep driving sales? Some examples of why the short game approach is flawed:
- Competitions/promos: the consumer is connecting with the prize not the brand or product in most cases
- Discounts: you are saying your brand/product is not worth a premium price
The long game is admitedly harder. Most people are savvy enough to see through marketing so forging a longterm bond with consumers requires enough creativity to surprise and delight them out of their cynicism. However the results are that there is the kind of loyalty that will see the brand through major market changes (like recessions). Its also worth adding that most of the worlds most successful products are driven by brand marketing that takes a longterm approach: Coca Cola for example.
I’m not saying that short-term marketing tactics have no place in the brand plan but if they’re the dominant force your likely to be building brands on shaky foundations.
Still on the subject of fashion Burberry are launching a social networking campaign called Art Of The Trench next month. Its built on a very simple idea (usually a good way to start) that consumers send in photos of themselves wearing a trenchcoat (i assume there will be some kind of incentive?). The brand also is making good use of Facebook and Twitter with interesting multimedia content around the brand and behind the scenes glimpses of their work. For dedicated followers of the brand they’ll also be screening their london fashion week show today (22nd Sept) at live.burberry.com.
This is similar to an approach we took with ghd revelations where everyone attending the event was encouraged to send in photos from the event (with the incentive being a ghd IV styler). The result was great as we were sent lots of great images (shortly to be on flickr) and recieved an unprecedented amount of blog posts about the event (we hadn’t realised we’d invited so many bloggers to be honest).
via psfk
I’m loving ifor1.co.za’s coverage of SA Fashion Week she has produced some really high quality video blogs from the event. A great example of what I was talking about in my last post about why bloggers are starting to get (or should get) VIP treatment from PRs at fashion week (and elsewhere). The coverage is quick, highly visual and in the abscence of much shortlead fashion press in South Africa probably the best way to get a view of fashion as it happens. Ifor1 is written by (proper journalist) Justine Stafford. Nice work.
The death of blogging (under the cute blue talons of Twitter) has been somewhat exaggerated. The perks for being a top blogger these days are just too good to give it up for the ease of 140 character chirrups. Global fashion blog JC Report did a post this week on fashion bloggers in the US being given great seats at New York Fashion Week from PRs that would have snubbed them a year or two ago.
Move over Anna Wintour—Jane Aldridge, Tavi, Susie Bubble and Bryanboy are ready to take your perch in the front row of fashion shows. It’s hard to imagine that just a few seasons ago these internet personalities with an insatiable appetite for fashion had a hard time getting invites. But due to their incredibly large following in the digital space, such new media powerhouses are collectively climbing the ranks in the stratified fashion hierarchy and are making a huge splash during New York Fashion Week.
Closer to home and also in the fashion world Style Scoop and 2oceansvibe we’re invited behind the scenes at Elle Magazines cover shoot this week, alongside TV show All Access. And I also see Jon Cherry of cherryflava is being flown to Madrid by Sony for some PR junket. As more and more PRs realise the value and reach of the top bloggers we’ll see more pro-bloggers getting the same treats and treatment that used to be reserved for media. I just hope I too can be a member of the bloggerati when i grown up!*
*the best i’ve done so far is a pass into the student screening room at Design Indaba and a cape town fashion week pass (and that’s only cos i have so much dirt on the organisers probably)
This week we’re busy planning what, as far as I can tell, is the world’s first ever Twitter pub quiz for Irish Whiskey brand Bushmills. Not as easy as it might sound. First of all there is the challenge that we must keep it limited to people 18+ (as the prize is a bottle of whiskey). This was solved by using a private Twitter account and linking it to the sign-up mechanic on www.bushmills.co.za. So its slightly complicated but works, you sign-up with your Twitter address, we follow you, you follow us back. The next challenge is to come up with questions that can’t be found easily on Google. Pretty tough but by going for South African bits of trivia and checking them on searches I think we’ll crack it. First round is on Friday about lunchtime and we’ll select a winner from people that answer all questions correctly. Bushmills on Twitter is found at @bushmillssa.
Quick update: week 1 was a success I reckon with about 20 entries and one winner (pretty tough questions it turns out)
Since I gave up being a fashion blogger last year there are whole bunch of new kids on the block blog (doing it better) in SA. One of the most interesting is a project from Elle writer Emily Pettitt-Coetzee who is wearing the same dress for a month and documenting her different ways of wearing it on dressforamonth.blogspot.com. The project is aimed at raising funds for the Elle Foundation but I think is a great single-minded blog idea which should do really well. Maybe i’ll wear my zip-through black top for a month as well (thinking about it i probably do). Just hope she’s doing some over night laundry though!
Music producer Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse (the band) and David Lynch have collaborated on an album/multimedia project called Dark Night Of The Soul. Due to a legal dispute with EMI it cannot be released as a traditional album so to get round it a book with photograpy by Lynch and a blank CD R have been released – the idea being you find somewhere to download it. South African’s will no doubt appreciate the photo of the prom princess braaiing.
You can hear a sample track in the youtube clip:
The Miniscule of Sound has to be one of my favorite ideas ever. Basically a fully functioning club – including bouncers, dj, dancefloor etc that fits about four people. What I learnt from this is you don’t need a big expensive idea to get people’s attention. A small perfectly formed bunch of arbness will sometimes do just the trick (on a fraction of the budget).
So I didn’t say anything about always posting new stuff…
The blog has been somewhat quiet this week as Atmosphere is putting the finishing touches together on a huge event for ghd next week. I thought as this is pretty much taking over my life at the moment it might as well take over the blog for a few days as well, so i’ll be giving some behind the scenes insights into the campaign when I get a chance.
The idea started mid-last year when we realised that although ghd was doing a great job reaching mainstream consumers we needed to do a bit more work to reach styleleader audiences – ghd has been built as a fashion brand and this audience is essential to its longterm health.
The ghd Revelations event was born out of this need and as a way to create closer connections with consumers (who are already passionate supporters of the brand). We wanted to come up with something to show off the creativity of the brand and hopefully surprise and inspire people. However South Africa suffers from a plague of fashion shows so a standard catwalk show was definitely out.
At some point we came across the idea of using Tableau Vivants – basically living fashion scenes (you might have seen elaborate ones in the Marie Antoinette movie). Definitely an old trend but our thought was to modernise it and spread them across an atmospheric location for guests to explore. The first idea was to find an old hotel and create a kind of David Lynch meets the Chelsea Hotel type event. Our first revelations mood board captures this nicely (and i still love the idea). Unfortunatly we couldn’t find a venue that was right for this so shifted the story slightly.
A couple of months into the development of the idea I came across the work of Punchdrunk in the UK an amazing theatre company that puts on events spread across buildings with lots of audience interaction. The idea of promenade theatre really suited the event so we started to build a loose story around the event that would be told through tableau vivant scenes and installation type work throughout our venue.
More to follow…
While the copywriter would be liable to have their hands chopped off for excessive puns in my neighbourhood, I thought this was quite interesting from Liberty’s in London. To promote their Prints Charming exhibition (groan) they invited shoppers to turn up for a fash-mob (kind of chic version of a flashmob) wearing florals for a photoshoot and walk-off. Apparently this was more successful than a fash-mob for the launch of the Chanel movie for which only 12 people showed up (a bridge too far maybe…). Via Stylebubble.
