This post is going to be a little different than other ones because I feel like my week really wasn’t that interesting due to a heavy workload, and I had a few thoughts while Christmas shopping that I thought I should try and write down. Partially to see what other people’s opinions are on them, and partially to organize what I was thinking and make it a little more cohesive in my tiny mind.
Yeah I’m in advertising so I write in sentence fragments, hope that doesn’t upset any grammar enthusiasts.
With that being said, here’s the week update part. We had our company Christmas party on Tuesday. Because it was, well, on a Tuesday and I was so busy at work this week I really didn’t party at it the way other people did. Apparently a whole crew of people kept on partying until 5 in the morning. I was in my bed by around 11 pm.
Fast forward to Friday night. Me and my buddy Rory went to go see Dragonforce. It was at the Croatian cultural center, and was packed. I wasn’t sure what to expect because I didn’t really know much about them, but it was easily one of the best shows I have ever seen. Seriously, if you ever hear that they’re coming to your town go see them. Plain and simple the band puts on an amazing show. Not only are all the members of the band bordering on virtuosity, but they all perform while jumping around, dancing and generally just partying on stage. It’s so refreshing to go to a show where you aren’t expecting much and be completely blown away. There’s been way too many times I’ve gone to see a band I like and they just stand there and act too cool for school. I can’t say enough positive things about the show.
Saturday, woke up a little hung over, went for breakfast at Sophies then went downtown for some Christmas shopping. Went down to Robson, into Gas town, through all the malls, and ended my day at a small restaurant called Brioche for an amazing seafood soup. Brioche is a great little restaurant that serves great food for fair prices. Everything from ham and brie sandwiches to venison stroganoff.
Now here’s the part of the blog entry where I run off on a tangent about something I was thinking about while in the midst of the Christmas shopping bustle. You might want to stop reading if you’re a communist or one of those people who hates marketing.
I am completely amazed by great fashion marketing. This doesn’t necessarily mean Fendi and Prada, but companies like American Apparel as well. More and more we’re moving to a world where half (or more) of buying the product is the experience of buying the product, I’m sure there’s a trendy word for it somewhere like post consumerism or something but it really amazes me how some companies do it so well and others seem to do it so miserably. Plain and simple, we often buy things from places because we think they’re cool places.
Take American Apparel as an example, they’ve made a blank t-shirt a cool, hot item to have. On top of that, despite no visible branding, they can still have people buy their shirts for $30 instead of a similar one from Fruit of the Loom for $10. Now I understand that there’s something to be said for their fits compared to say a Fruit of the Loom shirt. But even if Fruit of the Loom fixed their fits to be more like AA, I guarantee people would still go with the AA ones. The reason being they have a cohesive brand identity that is just straight up genius. Though it will probably never win awards, they’ve nailed down a particular coolness to everything they do that just gets kids drooling. The biggest part in my mind was the Terry Richardson-esque photography that started to adorn their advertising. On top of that, they used models in those “girl next door” photos who work at their stores. What happens next? Every hipster kid wants to work at their store. They literally have casting calls for their stores in Vancouver….casting calls to work a minimum wage job. The smartest part is the brand perpetuates itself. Get hipster kids working there, hipster kids will want to buy stuff there, the non hipster kids want to be cool and start shopping where the hipster kids shop.Voila.
All the stores I saw that were packed with people have something in common, a clear brand message.
American Apparel – “wear this stuff because horny hipster kids wear it and they’ll think you’re cool.”
Urban Outfitters – to an 18 year old kid this place looks like the hip downtown dream loft your cool older brother has. Equal parts irony, kitch and style.
Holt Renfrew – “This stuff IS as important as it seems, so you better appreciate it”
This by no means is meant to show any disrespect to how much the fashion of things actually matters, especially with Holt. But at the same time a perfect example is Urban Outfitters. They sell Levi’s jeans, the same cuts you can buy from the Levi’s store. But I guarantee you to millions of kids the ones sold at Urban Outfitters are considered cooler than the ones sold at the Levi’s store.
On the other side of the coin are companies that fail miserably at this. Take Sears for example. When I think of Sears I think of Dockers pants and fuzzy slippers. It’s a place I go to when I need to get a gift for someone in their sixties. By trying to be a jack of all trades, they’ve mastered none, and personally I don’t see how they’ll continue to exist. To the boomer generation this brand identity is less important. They grew up in a time and place that is a world apart from the one people in Gen Y grew up in. My dad told me when he went to elementary school there were kids who didn’t have shoes, others were lucky if they got two meals a day. Nowadays we don’t see those forms of poverty as consistently (if at all) in Canada. And just like Maslow said, once some needs get fulfilled, we move on the next ones. The commercial side of this is simple, whereas we used to say “I really need a shirt, my old one is ripped” we now say “I want a new shirt, I got a ton, but they aren’t cool anymore so I want something a little fresher”. Now lets bring this back to the scenario of Sears.
When people want a shirt, sure, go to Sears. When people want a cool shirt Sears doesn’t have what you’re looking for simply because it’s not a cool store. So if my dad wants a collared shirt, Sears seems like a fine option. For me, I’ll look other places. By having no brand experience when you’re in a Sears (and definitely nothing even relatively cool), they essentially comodify all their products. Once again, this is fine for boomers, but how do they plan to connect with our generation once the boomers go away? In a world where people buy things less because they need something, and more because they want to feel something from the purchase they really have to pick up their game. Other department stores are taking note, a great example is Target who have contacted top designers to do lower end lines for them.
I just find the way fashion companies in particular communicate with their target markets completely fascinating. I would love to see how these brands get developed from the insider perspective. Building the identity of a fashion store/label/company would be so cool. With that being said if you have 20 million dollars sitting in your pocket that you want to start a fashion company with, I’d be happy to head up your marketing department.
Did I miss something? Am I looking way to into this? I’m interested to hear what other people think of this.
I apologize in advance to all those Naomi Klein wannabes that think what I just wrote was disgusting.
Also, Ben Mills wrote an interesting entry at his blog about the controversy in regards to Obama’s invocation at his inauguration.
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4 comments:
Bravo Simon, couldn't agree with you more. I totally hate American Apparel, mainly because most of the staff is not even functionally retarded, but the kids love it and girls look really hot in anything from there. The only prolem with these "hip" stores is that once the fad passes, they could be left with their collective dicks in their hands unless they pick up on it early enough and transition their brand to the "new thing". I also think people are going to get sick of paying $30 for a white tee pretty soon as lots of kids are shopping second-hand again (like most of us did in the early-mid nineties when grunge was popular, coincidentally during a recession as well).
Have you read Confessions of an Advertising Man? It's old but a good read.
Also, my Grammar Enthusiasts Club has put a hit out on you.
...and thanks for the link to my post.
It'll be interesting to see if the brand American Apparel has created is recession proof. Given the idea is almost counter-intuitive to value shopping I wonder if they'll take a big hit.
The really incredible brands are the ones that last forever like Nike, Prada, etc. etc. They've gotten to the point where they no longer have to follow the "new thing" but instead just create it themselves. Nike puts out an ugly air force one with a pigeon on it and people in New York almost start a riot trying to get their hands on that shoe.
crazy.
well most economists say that female shoppers in the 18-35 bracket are the only ones that don't curb their spending during a recession, so maybe women are recession-proof. Some analyst on Bloomberg has been pumping True Religion stock (didn't know they were public) and said this, so maybe AA will weather the storm. My only concern (and it's not a concern because I couldn't care less about them) is that they did a Starbucks and pumped out too many stores. They open something like 50 stores a day. Ridiculous.
I bought a bunch of shit for xmas at Sears this year. But none of it was clothes. Sears caters to the market of people who can't afford AA or Nike(the good nike stuff anyway). I think your statement about the absence of poverty in Canada is bogus. Wait until you need a new washer/dryer, you'll be at Sears, at least for a look.
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