Fashion Notebook

Lessons in Branding: Levi's 2.0

If you haven't already, check out this story about Levi's "Jumpin' In" online viral campaign.

Now, I'm sure a lot of your out there at the apparel companies are salivating over the whole online thing, but you're probably pretty uncertain how to go about doing it. After all, you're already beset with fickle consumers whose whims seem to change with the season and who are constantly pounding on the  castle door with cries of "More! More! More!" so why move into the web where EVERYONE is fickle and decisions are made in less than a nanosecond?

Well, consider this example.

That "Jumpin' In" campaign—which features online videos of teens, well, jumping into their jeans through a mélange of backflips, roof dives, etc., and launched May 5 to build buzz for the "Live Unbuttoned" global campaign for the brand's flagship 501 collection—snatched some 3.5 million hits in 10 days. And if that doesn't factor into your media membranes, here's some more traditional fodder: The spots got play on "Good Morning America" and coverage from the Grey Lady's new style challenger Wall Street Journal.

Here's our comic-strip style flip book of a scene from one of the viral videos, which by the way, we think are totally stunning in an "I can't believe he freakin' did that" kind of way.

"[Jumpin' In] was supposed to be a small seeding activity," Robert Cameron, vp-marketing at Levi Strauss, San Francisco, told journo Gregory Solman at our sister-pub Adweek. "We didn't know it was going to blow up. So we're meeting with BBH on how to chase this. What do we do to adjust the strategy and ride the wave?"

Listen, you've heard this from us and our friends a million times already. The online space, and viral videos in particular, don't necessarily guarantee the kind of success that you can see here with Levi's version. But they do allow you to experiment, without the expense of a real test market, with some creative that just might pique consumer interest in a similar way. And you know who can explain this better than we can? Kevin Kells, the CPG sales head over at Google. Kells might be more in the niche of beauty and, well, packaged goods marketing, but what he has to say about the online thought process for ad creatives is, in our humble estimation, universally applicable.

Here's an exerpt from our convo with him a while back:

          Brandweek: What do you tell CPG marketers who still rely on traditional print and TV buys?                  Kevin Kells: I tell them that online advertising is more efficient, but that they have to look at               sponsored links as doorways that take your consumer where they want to go, where you can add
          value to their life. The problem is that traditional media is ingrained for many of those CMOs and
          marketers. They have 30 years of data on TV and magazines. So even though it's easier to get ROI
          figures from online ads, you’re up against 30 years of market data.

 
BW: Would you revolutionize those departments to have them doing it all online?
KK: No. It’s not to say that they should stop doing that stuff, but there’s a way to go a little deeper online around consumer insights. Instead of focusing on a small amount of creative, they should be making more. They should be making 1,000 digital assets a year as opposed to three television assets.
 
BW: Does what you’re suggesting require multiple times the amount of creative?
KK: Yes. That’s an obstacle and that’s paralyzing to them. Conceptually now we’re beginning to get them to know that they need to be online with different stories and they have the infrastructure. But in order to put all of those assets in the right place, someone does have to make them. That can be solved by more efficiency. There’s a clunky system right now between the client and their multiple agencies. That’s why you see the emergence of agency networks like WPP.

OK, class dismissed for now. Next time, we'll take a look at those other web items that are probably giving you both a surge of excitement and perhaps some sweaty palms: widgets, the online applications that you've no doubt seen on your kids (or hey, maybe even your own) Facebook and MySpace profiles, or, if you're chic tech nerds like us, those wonderful things that pop up when you hit F12 on your Apple computer.

Lessons in Branding: How Diesel Fuel For Life Rocketed the Brand to the Top of the Fragrance Market, With Just One Launch

So no doubt you've all seen the ads for Diesel's first foray into
the fragrance category, Fuel For Life, right? (If not, check out these trés sexy photos, at right and below, left). Well, what you probably didn't know is that this one fragrance has shot the Diesel name up to the top of the men's cologne business.

According to figures from NPD Group, the fragrance was the No. 3 overall launch (across men's and women's fragrances) for 2007, despite the fact that Diesel had no history in the category. What's more, through February 2008, the fragrance is solidly within the Top 10 Men's Colognes, ranked by sales.

So how'd they do it? With an ad campaign that didn't only win over consumers, but also won awards, picking up the Fragrance Advertising of the Year via the Fragrance Foundation, in both the men's and women's category. So when we're drooling over the eye candy in both of these shots, it's for a reason. This stuff really IS solid gold.

Wanna hear more? Well, you can ready all about it in our article "Filling It Up With Premium." If you're link-a-phobic, here's a taste:

It's no secret that most every fashion brand wants to break into the fragrance business. And with good reason. While the market is fickle, materials can be found on the cheap, the bottles have a long shelf life and their contents are less prone to the more dramatic trend overhauls that characterize luxury apparel. Because customers will actually pay up to $80 for a little bottle of the stuff, the profit margins smell loveliest of all. But Diesel knew it was facing an uphill battle as an unknown in the space, which was presumably behind its decision to partner with L'Oréal, Paris, for its first foray into the category.

It's also why the introductory support broke many of the traditional rules L'Oréal applies to marketing and launching its ever-expanding portfolio of fragrances. First there was the aforementioned antimarketing viral campaign in the weeks leading up to the August 2007 launch. (Some subsequent print ads announced that the fragrance was "finally legalised.")

Next, when it came to traditional brand advertising (chiefly print and TV), the campaign took a more-is-more approach. Rather than one TV spot, the company created six, via agency FFL Paris. Instead of two, static print ads, one for men and one for women, that feature either a celebrity or single model, FFL created four executions, each of them utilizing a new model to express the individuality of the fragrance. The tag read simply: "Are You Alive?"

"For us, this was an ambitious project," said Ulli Lindauer, vp-marketing of L'Oréal European designer fragrances. "There is a moment captured in the photography that is a universal moment of feeling alive. It was about the brand giving each of us the opportunity to be an individual."

Lesssons In Branding: Is Vera Wang the Next Martha Stewart?

Vera Wang, a high-end designer who has made a name for herself over the past two decades creating wedding gowns (with price tags to match, and photo'ed, right), is now opening her own wedding registry—a first in the designer market. Which kind of surprises us, and then, eh, not so much, and then we're all like: "Hey why did no one think of this before?!"

(Full disclosure: It was a late night, and stayed up party with the Cuervo people waaay past our already respectably late bedtime, so if we seem a little dazed today, it's not you, or Vera for that matter. It's us, sweetcakes.)

Anyhow... back to the relevance. VeraWangonWeddings.com will allow not only custom registries for engaged couples, but also a breakdown of runway trends, e-commerce, couples quizzes and wedding planning ideas from Wang herself.

But the bridal registry and e-commerce site is only the tip of the branding iceberg for Wang. In a series of moves similar to those of the one-woman empire orchestrated by love-her-or-hate-her-you-betta- respect-her Martha Stewart, the designer has recently expanded into diverse categories such as bedding, home goods and stationary. Additionally, Wang launched a collection for Kohl's stores late last year.

"Our authoritative position in bridal and bridal registry has allowed us to leverage this [consumer] trust into a lifestyle brand," said Wang. "The next logical step is to capitalize on our relationship with the client over the course of their lives. Our objective is to continue to grow our lifestyle product offering and keep pace with the evolving needs of the consumer."

Wang added that, moving forward, her company is exploring expansion into furniture, decorative fabrics, rugs, lighting and even a Wang-branded line of paint. Now we just won't know who's jungle green to trust when we repaint the bathroom: Vera's or Ralph's?

But what's to stop Wang from becoming like others who burst into multi-category expansions like Bill Blass or Halston, and getting less than sterling results? (Take "less than sterling" to mean abominable here, dears.) Well, apparently, it's because, as Dylan used to croon in that nails-on-a-chalkboard voice: The times they are a-changin'. And so are consumers and designers, y'all!

"We're at a different time for both consumers and designers; and I think Vera is really capitalizing on the ability to do both high and low in the design realm," said Wendy Liebman, CEO of WSL Retail, New York. "The level of sophistication and level of exposure of shoppers has changed and that acceptance, through what's gone on with H&M's designer collaborations, has really opened a door."

For Liebman, Wang's strategy makes sense and she doesn't seem to be stretching the bounds of her brand potential. "The expansion into bridal registry is a logical one, and the home goods are the same . . . Certainly her work with Kohl's appears to be working," said Liebman. "When you look at what Bill Blass or Halston did, versus what Martha or Vera are doing now, you've got a convergence of a smarter shopper and a smarter designer."

Yes, yes, all well and good. And we think V might actually pull it off.

But if her marketing folks are reading this, please, please let us make one wish for how she rolls out home goods, particularly kitchen appliances. Forget the Today Show and get Ms. Wang's face on Food Network's "Paula's Party." We're salivating at the proposition of having Paul Deen (photo, left) do a wedding cake episode with Wang brought on as creative consultant, and having Deen shout out: "We're making weddings today, y'all, and I've brought along my good friend, hot cutter, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, howit creature... Oh whatever y'all, it's fashion designer Vera Wang!" The episode practically writes itself.

This is a sure-fire way to sell Wang, and her image, unequivocally to the lucrative Middle America and mass markets.

Week in Review Pt. 2: In Which Gap Rethinks Marketing Spend, Reebok's CMO Moves Into the Driver's Seat, and Airwalk Taps MySpace Celebrities

Once again, we're sorry that we've been silent for so long! But we've been writing a lot for that dying industry: the print book. Hey, you gotta eat!

Anyhow, here's a brief recap of our stories from last week, and this week, along with that snarky commentary that you guys seem to love. So here's a few things that you might have missed.

And now... back to the recap. (We promise some new stories very, very soon!)

Gap Brand Forgoes Spring TV Spot, Amid Tightening Following Rough Quarter
After Gap reported fourth quarter sales of $4.67 billion, a 5% drop from last year, the company had some interesting news on the marketing front.

The company is actively looking to trim costs as it weathers a “volatile economic environment,” said CEO Glenn Murphy, in a conference call to analysts on Feb. 28.

The struggling retailer will reexamine its marketing plans for the second half of 2008, once it has a better understanding of its holiday efforts, said Murphy. “We’re very aware of the environment in which we’re operating in 2008, but not all of our marketing money is being revisited," he said. "Some portion is being re-looked at to make sure it’s being used appropriately, given that consumer sentiment is where it is, and that particularly applies at Old Navy.”

The immediate marketing plans for Old Navy and Banana Republic would remain similar in scope to last year’s, while the company has decided to forgo a spring TV campaign for the Gap brand, said evp/CFO Sabrina Simmons.

The primary focus of spring marketing for the namesake division will be print and in-store efforts for the retailer’s footwear collaboration with designer Pierre Hardy, due out in March. Additionally, Gap will launch a capsule T-shirt collection, a design collaboration with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which will hit retail stores in April.

Hmm... Doesn't sound good. And add that to the fact that, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, Gap already cut its ad spend in half for last year, spending an estimated $55 million (down from $117 million in 2006), per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Old Navy spent an estimated $173 million on U.S. ads in 2007, down slightly from $200 million in 2006.

For the full story, click here.

Reebok CMO Uli Becker Moves Into the Driver's Seat as Prez/CEO Harrington Exits
Uli Becker got a jump last week, when the Reebok CMO was named president and CEO of the ailing brand, following the resignation (forced?) of top dog Paul Harrington, who had been with the company for 12 years.

This is actually something of a growing trend across industries, one that we've been keeping track of. In fact, wouldn't you know, we wrote something about it today. Check out that story, about CMOs migrating to the CEO and presidential roles, here.

Back to the relevance, Becker (photo, left) joined Reebok back in May 2006, following his duties as the head of global brand marketing for Adidas (Reebok's parent company) and managing director of Adidas International in Amsterdam. When he joined Reebok, Becker announced his intent to streamline marketing operations and to unify brand messaging, as the athletic footwear and apparel maker sought to turn its business around and reposition itself in the marketplace.

We like him. He's a straight shooting guy who's looking to get all of those mixed messages cleaned up and get the brand on the track to profitability, all with the kind of efficiency you'd expect from a German executive. So we expect good things, hopefully, and, it would appear, so does Adidas jefe principal Herbert Hainer.

"[Paul Harrington] played an instrumental role in managing the integration of Reebok into our group and laid the foundations for the repositioning of the Reebok brand worldwide," said Hainer, chairman and CEO of Adidas, in a statement. "Uli Becker's proven leadership and global marketing expertise make him uniquely qualified to take the revitalization of the Reebok brand to the next level, both internationally and in the US."

Reebok's marketing for 2008 would be focused on women's running and "American major league sports," underscored in the brand's forthcoming "Your Move" campaign, said Hainer. The campaign, previewed last year, aims to cast Reebok as the brand for individuals rather than hardcore athletes and is part of a larger effort for Reebok to capture the sport lifestyle market.

Details regarding a CMO replacement were not available.

McGarryBowen, New York, is the lead ad agency for Reebok. The company's latest ad campaign launched two weeks ago in conjunction with the release of its first "Freestyle World Tour" collection (but, of course, our readers already knew about that). The product line will include five new sneaker and apparel editions, which will roll out during the course of this year. "Freestyle Tokyo," which launched Feb. 21, will be followed by other editions that derive their name and design inspiration from cities like Paris, London, and New York.

For the full story, click here. For all of our Reebok-related posts, check here. 

Airwalk Looks at MySpace for Brand Models
In its spring 2008 campaign, which hits a variety of alterna- lifestyle titles in June (and it's not the 1990s anymore honey, so we're not talking about gay pubs, but rather the skate/surf/
snowboard glossies), Airwalk went to MySpace for part of its casting call.

In addition to leveraging images of its athletes, including Rodney Jones, the brand cast Lorene Drive, a band that creative director Jeff Buice found on MySpace, to be featured in their ads (check outtake spot, right). Even more interesting is that the ads feature mini-anecdotes from the talent, and directs readers to log onto Airwalk.com to see the full story, and then write in some stories of their own.

Buice told me that the idea is basically to make a social network around ad campaign creative. Yeah, it made us do a double take too. But Airwalk has been on the online game for sometime now, and this is just the latest way that they're engaging with the online market.

"We always do print ads because it still reaches tons of the demo that we’re going after. But the online component is growing massively, out of control, for our [consumers]," Buice told me. "The hook was finding a way to get people to correlate between the two, while still maintaining a focused, singular strategy."

Intrigued? Check out the full story, here. 

UPDATED: The Freestyle World Tour and Reebok's Search for Female Consumers

UPDATE!: Reebok flacks reassure us that "Framed" is full speed ahead. And, what's more, it's now available on Yahoo!Sports and behind-the-scenes footage has been, er, Flickr'd. Congrats! Now, what about that whole "Your Move" campaign?

For those new readers who walked into this convo like a child wandering into the middle of a movie ("You're out of your element Donny!"), check the rhymes below. Note: There won't be any more Big Lebowski references from here on out, for better or for worse...

Been around the world and I, I, I... I can't find my
Reeboks?

Forgive the indulgence of a song we've had stuck in our heads this morning (sometimes shower song sessions can drag into the work world, even for business-minded journos like us!), but it kinda, sorta ties into Reebok's new Freestyle World Tour launch that kicks off Feb. 21. Once again, it's a puzzler. But first, the deets.

Again going after the women's market, Reebok is taking a Nylon-style tour de monde with a new collection of apparel and footwear that will incorporate the particular modes of fashion capitals including Tokyo, Paris, New Delhi (huh?), Madrid, London and New York. Starting tomorrow, the first style, a send up of Tokyo street style with inspiration taken from the city's subway map hits stores. Future releases for each city will roll out as follows:

March 2008—Freestyle Paris, which references the "Can Can" in red, pink and black
May 2008— Freestyle New Delhi, featuring embossed satin and Bollywood-style vibrant color patterns
July 2008—Freestyle Madrid, which references flamenco dancers
Setpember 2008—Freestyle London, featuring an embroidered raven on the heel
November 2008—Freestyle New York, which references our city's unmistakable taxi cabs

All shoes will retail for $85, and the apparel collections that accompany them, which include hoodies, tees, and track jackets, will retail for $28-$75.

The global ad campaign, for which spend was not revealed, will include print, in-store and digital efforts. Somehow "global" just doesn't ring right without the  "TV  spots" tag, but hey, we're traditionalists. Reebok spent $27.5 million on measured media advertising in 2006, and for the first 11 months of 2007, has spent $16.6 million. Below is a list of the pitch women the brand has signed  for the campaign. Full disclosure: We had to look them all up too, so feel free to click the names if you're unfamiliar!

Tokyo—Ai Yasuda                                Madrid—Bimba Bose
Paris—Yelle                                         London—Nikki Beatnik
New Delhi—Sagarika Ghatge                New York—Sheetal Sheth (above, in a spot for the NYC collection)
 
 Since none of the girls here are names that we've heard of—and we'd like to think we're pretty up on things—the campaign is a bit of a puzzler unless they're going for super underground authenticity appeal. But isn't that the kind of marketing that a big brand like Reebok should avoid? Shouldn't Reebok be looking for bigger sales, to grab a larger share of the market and turn around their banking books?

What happened to Scarlett Johannson? And what about that IFC film series, "Framed," that they launched not too long ago.  

And what about the "Your Move" campaign we heard about back in September, when CMO Uli Becker (a straight-talking Adidas alum), told us the following:

"We need our marketing to appreciate where the consumer comes from and make them king of the whole thing as well," Uli Becker, head of global marketing, explained of the brand's "Your Move"  campaign. "It brings the message into one campaign context. Whether we're talking about running or women, we're playing into one equity image of the brand with that single slogan."

For a brand that said it was going to focus on a single, streamlined marketing approach, it doesn't seem to be delivering. "Framed", the "Kool-Aid" collection and, now, the Freestyle World Tour seem diametrically opposed to Becker's statement about a unified message. In fact, it seems like the same kind of mixed messaging that he said, at the time, had been detrimental to Reebok in the past.

Speaking of "Your Move" campaign, why haven't we seen it anywhere yet? Has "Your Move" moved on? Trust that we're on the hunt to find some answers here.

 

The Big Bang: J.C. Penney's Biggest Launch Ever for "American Living," (And Why It's Smarter Than You Skeptics Might Think!)

J.C. Penney is really going whole hog with the
marketing push behind its new "American Living" collection!

While we hear a lot of "biggest push ever" b.s. from marketers, this one's the real deal:

-First TV spot hits Univision, in Spanish, for the "Premio Lo Nuestro a la Musica Latina" Awards, on Feb. 21
-Mass-market TV spot to make full debut during the Oscars, on Feb. 24
-Month-long run on prime-time TV slots
-A 60-second in-cinema spot at an estimated 14,000 theaters for all PG and PG-13 features
-Print campaign in the usual barrage of consumer pubs (see example, right).
-Direct mail with 12 different specialty catalogs
-In-store promotions, including fixtures and themed uniforms for employees
-AmericanLiving.com dedicated Web site.
-Creative shot by Bruce Weber (sufficeth to say, ain't cheap people!)

The brand and the campaign, both by Polo Ralph Lauren's Global Brand Concepts group, will be the biggest in the company's history, according to CMO Mike Boylson. The imaging is meant as an emotional play that connects consumers with images of Americana and family.

While some may doubt the strategy of going big during a time when consumers feel like they're going bust—and Boylson said he's heard more than a few naysayers—the strategy actually works in their favor, according to Patricia Pao, of The Pao Principle, New York, who told me that J.C. Penney could potentially triple their media spend value given that they will be one of the few people making a real push.

And even though she felt the price points for the collection—a broad swath covering $24-$500 goods—might be a bit too aspirational for the times, WSL Strategic Retail's Candace Cortlett told me that the big campaign is still a good investment in the brand.

"[This effort] will live beyond the hard times," she said. "The worst thing to do is to put all of the energy into developing a brand like this and then just letting it sit on the shelf. That was Sears’ mistake when they got the Land’s End franchise."

Check out the full story here.

Financial Desk: Polo Ralph Lauren Sales Climb 13% in Q3

Looks like Polo Ralph Lauren will follow Coach in refuting
those analyst downgrades last month.

The New York-based fashion house posted a 13% increase in sales, at $1.2 billion for the third quarter ended Dec. 29, though net income rose a scant 2% to $112.7 million, or $1.08 per diluted share, over the same period. Polo also upped its fiscal year-end earnings guidance, now anticipating earnings per share in the lower end of a $3.64-$3.74 range. The prior guidance has been $3.50 to $3.60.

"Even in the context of macroeconomic uncertainty, our strategies remain intact," said Roger Farah, president and CEO, in a statement, an obvious allusion to fears over the pending U.S. recession's impact on the luxury market (for more on that, see my previous article, "Mass Affluents Retreat En Masse," here).

"Our company offers the highest quality, aspirational merchandise across the entire consumer spectrum," added Ralph Lauren, chairman and CEO, in a statement. "The diversity of our brand portfolio, the strength of our lifestyle positioning,  the talent of our creative and managerial teams and our increasingly global reach are enviable assets that position us well for long-term growth."

It's the last part of that statement that has gotten us to thinking: Has Polo really beaten the U.S. recession?

The company does not break out its sales for the U.S. region, in particular. No real surprise there, many global companies shy away from doing so. But there were some other indicators that have us scratching our head a bit.

"In the past few years, we have made significant long-term investments in our international business with the expansion of Europe, product categories such as Lauren and childrenswear, and channel expansion with our own retail stores and e-commerce," said Farah, in a statement. "Our more recent efforts include the repositioning of Japan and the development of accessories. While the recent decline in consumer spending presents near-term challenges, we continue to invest in our strategic initiatives as we believe they are long-term drivers of shareholder value."

So it would seem that Polo is hitching its horse, at least in part, to the international and e-commerce markets. Interesting, particularly in light of the conversation I had with luxury analyst Milton Pedraza (of The Luxury Institute, New York) a while back. Pedraza told me that, in the wake of the recession,  luxury brands had three main points of attack to weather the storm: focusing only on the super-rich who would be effectively immune from an economic recession, focusing on international markets to provide global relief for near-term losses in the U.S., and beefing up their online presence to accomplish that global reach.

Seems like Polo is hitting two out of three now. Of course, it would seem that the broad array of price points the brand offers might also provide some recession-ready padding.

Still no information on what role, if any, advertising and marketing played in the quarterly results. Will have to wait on that for later. Can't imagine they'd have much impact, since they've been fairly boring and cookie-cutter across the various collections. Enjoy a recent spot, above.

Polo spent $57 million on measured media advertising in the U.S. market for 2006, and spent $58 million through November 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

Lessons in Branding: A Night Out with Ben Sherman

Having attended many fashion parties that were no more
than an excuse to down a bunch of free drinks before going
out for your real night on the town, we must admit that most of them are throw-aways, except in the rare instance that they shed some light on some real branding work.

While such is by far the rarest of breed in the Fashion Week party line up, Ben Sherman's party Friday night at the brand's Soho flagship proved to be a rumination on the execution of a rebranding, if not a somewhat nostalgic trip down memory lane for us (pictures left, via LastNightsParty.com).

If you haven't checked in with Ben Sherman in a while you should, because it's likely very different than you remember. The U.S. vp-marketing, Dana Dynamite has been working to give the brand some serious hipster cred, starting out  first with a MySpace site several years ago (one of the first to jump on that now über-popular chuck wagon) and extending relationships with a series of downtown New York nightlife's more  prominent partiers (and all too often, party promoters by default... hey, even hipsters gotta eat!).

Most recently, the brand inked a partnership with Merlin Bronques, a downtown scene photographer á la, but predating MisShapes (R.I.P.) and The Cobra Snake (we're fairly sure about this, facts about these guys are usually anecdotal at best) as well as newcomers like Nicky Digital (if you don't know these names, you're either over 35 years old or need to seriously re-read your Hipster Handbook). Bronques produced a series of stills—in k eeping with his hipster verité styles—of downtown's denizens that were used for a Christmas OOH campaign here in New York.  Alongside Bronques came a slew of other night-lifers, such as the DJ/comic (huh?) Mike Nouveau (who's really a web marketing and ad sales guy for Paper, and prior to that held similar duties over at Rolling Stone, pictured, left, with friends) and DJ Jess (the skinny, seemingly sexually ambidextrous DJ who used to, and perhaps still does, spin at Rififfi, where you can expect to hear "Kids in America" and "Common People" about 1.75 times each hour).

So, at the party, it all became clear how these kids—we have to laugh here a little bit, since we've seen them evolve over the past four years from awkward kids our friends used to hook up with to something of legitimate (?) nightlife figures, and speaking of Merlin, why did you lose the wig!!??—have been perfectly deployed to revamp this aged British apparel brand both on and offline (they all promote each other via MySpace pages).

The party was thronged with young kids (check out all the images, here.), which isn't such a surprising thing at fashion events, particularly during Fashion Week. But it was thronged with the kinds of people that we recognize, obviously a direct appeal to young twentysomethings who make the rounds at various clubs decked out in DIY and bargain fashions. The walls were splattered with images from the current campaign, and the room packed with a bunch of young, mod-ish looking pretties that posed for Bronques' pictures. (Though due diligence requires us to report that there were some aging club queens out as well, but that's par for the course around downtown NYC. It wouldn't feel like home without them.)

And while our friend did note that the new outdoor campaign looked like "American Apparel Lite" (which, to be fair, is, itself pretty much "1970s-Era Gym Porn Lite"), Ben Sherman was effectively communicating its new message. After being off of our radar for years, Ben Sherman suddenly felt hip. And the product wasn't—particularly the party dresses—bad either.

And it's not just our musings either. Agyness Deyn, that pixie-faced model you've been seeing in nearly everyone's campaigns this year, popped into the party, wearing some super high shouldered blue jacket and with a mini-entourage of bottle blonds in tow.  That  surely says something, whether she was comp'ed  for the night or not. Though I'm starting to worry about Agyness as a brand spokesperson—seems she's been a bit of the village bicycle lately and while we love her look, we have to wonder how much Agyness we'll have to see before we get fatigue and move on.

And speaking of moving on, while we love the 1980s, I think it's time we stopped LITERALLY reinterpreting the decadent decade. Seriously, there's a way to pull off hip without being a literal reproduction of a Salt N' Peppa album cover. Cheap, clunky gold chain and patent purses were always passé people!

AmEx Takes NY Fashion Week Live on the American Express Fashion Network

American Express wants to be the card women
don’t leave the runway without.

The brand today kicks off an ambitious multi-faceted program for New York Fashion Week, with myriad bells and whistles. As part of its “American Express Fashion Network,” the brand will provided streaming, live runway videos via its AmericanExpress.com/style micro site. (A preview of the site can be viewed, right. Click to enlarge.)

Also posted will be exclusive content such as designer and celebrity interviews from the Bryant Park Tents, and trend digests from hosts and correspondents Robert Verdi (the stylist you might best remember from that elegant snarkfest "Fashion Police") and Roshumba Williams (the fashion model discovered by Yves Saint Laurent, who made her on-camera name as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight in 2002). The site will stay up, providing archived content and new shows, throughout the duration of  New York Fashion Week.

The site will be promoted through online advertising, as well as a partnership with Youtube, whereby the Google-owned video sharing site will create its own dedicated fashion channel to feature highlights from the American Express Fashion Network.

The online initiative expands on last season’s American Express’ Skybox program for the September 2007 Fashion Week, in which elite card members (that's Gold Card and above, honey!) were given access to a special viewing area, complete with catered food and drink, overlooking the two main runways.

In addition to continuing that program, the company has also added a card member-only collection presentation from designer Peter Som, as well as a series of private parties, and a $500,000 donation to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund that supports young, up and coming design talent.

“Fashion is important to us because it represents a distilled sense of identity, and really empowers women, so it resonates well with our card member base,” said Jessica Igoe, director of sponsorship marketing for American Express, New York.

Igoe added that correspondent, and model, Roshumba Williams was also selected for her ability to appeal to the female demographic.

“She represents someone who is confident and has strong experience in the industry and is recognizable for our target audience, particularly working women,” Igoe said. “The program has a key focus on our female consumers, especially working women. We’re trying to help [that woman] find either live experiences like Fashion Week runway shows, or retail experiences that instill confidence.”

And obviously, if that confidence  gives the courage to break out that AmEx and buy a few pairs of brand new Louboutins, hey, all the better!

Check it all out here.

The Luxury Market, The Recession and What Marketers Can Do About It

If you haven't checked it out already—and it seems many of you have since it's o ne of the most popular stories on our site this week—give a quick gloss to my story about mass affluent consumers retreating from the luxury market as we head into what analysts and the papers seems to be projecting as a certain American recession. Read the full story here. 

Raúl Martinez, CEO and  executive creative director over at AR New York (they've done worked for brands including Salvatore Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace and the most recent ads for Valentino, post the namesake's well-publicized adieu, pictured at right) seemed to sum it up nicely.

“I think the downturn in the luxury-goods market is now trickling down to Europe and it’s been a shock to many over there," he told me. "For a while there’s been a sort of comfort-level that luxury brands have enjoyed. Consumer are cautious and luxury brands are in alert mode.”

It's an interesting time for sure, and many of the analysts and consultants I spoke to for this story told me that they see several key points emerging from the luxury market's stumble over the past few weeks:

1. That affected luxury brands were taken by surprise given that they underestimated how much of their growth over the past five years had been fueled by these mass affluent consumers;

2. That the first area where tightened budgets might force some changes will be in the marketing and advertising departments. (This is, of course, a general market theory as well, and can be extrapolated to areas far beyond the luxury market in specific.;

3. And that some of those tightened ad dollars could increasingly go towards online campaigns, which offer greater ROI than the traditional media (no big secret to anyone) and also have the additional benefit of global reach that could prompt sales in foreign markets, which are still a thriving area for luxury goods.

However, the problem is that luxury marketers will most likely not be making quick, dramatic changes to their traditional media buys.

As Pam Danziger, the head of Unity Marketing, a luxury consultancy based in Stevens, Pa., told me: "The idea that magazine and TV advertising will go away is ridiculous, but what will become more important is having a better understanding of the consumer they're looking at. It's becoming much more vertical...with some of these niche magazines providing more connection to [the luxury sector's] real target market."

This trend seemed to be confirmed by Jason Binn, CEO of Niche Media, New York. Unless you're part of the uber-wealthy for whom these magazines are as ubiquitous as McDonald's golden arches are for the rest of us, you've probably seen his titles—among them Gotham, Hamptons, Ocean Drive and Los Angeles Confidential—in the high dollar rooms you booked through the company for a recent conference in Vegas. I know that I never stay at The Hotel on my own dime.

Per Danizger's assertion, Binn's group offers luxury marketers access to the consumers who will buy their products regardless of recessionary woes, the kind of folks, who, to paraphrase a WWD headline a few days ago, are more concerned with getting their high heels wet waiting in a drizzle outside of Chanel's couture show, than they are about this "thing" called a recession.

The titles are distributed to a consumer base in which roughly 50% have annual household incomes of over $250,000, as well as liquid assets and homes each valued at over $1 million. The books are also distributed through Net Jets, the private jet company owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, where Binn says he reaches customers with an average net worth of $25 million. 

"[Luxury brands] are relying on us more than ever to vertically integrate their products and their services to these wealth markets that we’re targeting with these very unique readers and consumers that we have,” Binn told me. “The [vast majority of] mainstream consumer magazines can’t really deliver those kind of  economic demographics to these brands.”

Though he did acknowledge that luxury marketers were shifting some dollars to more non-traditional media, for his part, Martinez said that it's a time when these brands need to maintain a consistency in their messaging.

"At a time like this its more important than ever to communicate with a singular voice and a singular vision...I think the worst thing a brand can do is to deviate from who they truly are, because over the long-term consumer confidence will be lost," Martinez told me. "One thing I think we have seen over the last number of years is a movement away from the more emotional creative and towards a more product-centric messaging. More dollars are being applied to Resort and Pre-Fall which are becoming true collections in their own right, where wearability becomes much bigger.”

Looks like for now, we'll have to play a game of wait and see concerning how the ad market will change for luxury players. Saks Fifth Avenue, for example, has already said that they're looking into doing ads in foreign magazines to grab some more tourism dollars, something the luxe retailer has never done before, and soon they'll start offering international shipping on their e-commerce Web site.

Meanwhile, I'll be comparison shopping the Vogue ad pages to see if any of this media shift stuff pans out. Oh, and Vanity Fair, you're on my list too.

Marketing to Men: How Two Beauty Brands are Reaching the Elusive "Mook" Psychographic

When I saw Knocked Up for the first time on DVD, I kind of fell in love with Seth Rogen. The same thing happened when I watched Jonah Hill’s character saunter through frenetic, sexually frustrated dialog in Superbad (see Rogen pictured, far left, with film's stars, Michael Cera and Hill) earlier this year. These guys reminded me of an old college buddy of mine: a pot-smoking, hard-drinking good times guy whose “Madden 2004” soundtrack used to put me to sleep each night, and with whom I'd spend the weekends swollen with beer, hollering myself hoarse watching NCAA games at a local Irish bar. We'd rag on each other, compare girls we were dating (these were my pre-out days, and now we split down the middle, he'll go for Juno's Ellen Paige while I'll geek out over Cera), and our apartment was the kind of squalor that we've both promised we'll never live in again.

Because, you know, those days are over. But they're not really, and guys well beyond the college years are whooping it up, well, like guys in college.

If you haven't already, check out my most recent feature story, "The Mook Industrial Complex," here.

The term comes from a 2001 Frontline documentary (female counterparts were dubbed "midriffs") and they're the zeitgeist of the 18-34 year old male demo that represents about $1.02 billion in annual household income according to MRI reports.

The problem is, they're highly elusive and, what's more, even though you might think their humor beyond sophomoric, they are wizards at blocking out your marketing messages. Maxim's Rob Gregory told me that these guys receive roughly 3,000 impressions a day (if they live in an urban area, natch) and they block out about 90% of them. So going after the dude-bro is not as easy as slapping a scantily-clad woman on a 30-second commercial for beef jerky, say. But some brands have found a way to get through the clutter, and there's some good advice and strategy talk from the marketing honchos at Mitchum (unit of Revlon) and Axe (unit of Unilever).

Oh, and for extra gross-out factor, check out some of the sites I had to go through for my research: Ebaum's World and College Humor. I can't guarantee that it's work safe, kids, so browse at your own risk.

Penelope Cruz-a-palooza: Mango's First U.S. Campaign Drops in February

Look for a new string of print, outdoor and online ads for
Mango in February 2008.

The Spanish fast fashion retailer will launch its first-ever US campaign this coming February. The creative will feature actress Penélope Cruz, who will continue to be the face of Mango for the spring and summer 2008 seasons. Check out the shots at right (click to enlarge). (In other Cruz news, the actress is currently working "Los Abrazos Rotos," or "Broken Hugs" in English, a new film with her director pal, Pedro Almodóvar, that is due out in 2008.)

The campaign, per Optimedia, New York, follows the launch of the brand's U.S. flagship store in Soho in late November, which brings their stateside store total to 11. The brand plans to open an additional 5-7 doors next year.

"We want to take as much advantage as possible of having Penélope as our brand image for this spring campaign as she represents the Mango style at its top level," Judith Rius, Mango's advertising director, told me recently, adding that the campaign was shot by photo duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Spend on the campaign was not available.

Cruz has gone deep with the brand recently, launching her own collection (designed by the actress in tandem with her sister, Mónica) at Mango in September.

The opening of the flagship store, as well as the plans to roll out a much more aggressive advertising campaign in the U.S. market, reflect the brand's growing investment overseas.

"From now on we are going to invest more in the U.S., and that starts with our new flagship in New York," Rius said. "We are really at the beginning in this country. We have over 200 stores in Spain, and only 11 in the United states so we have a lot more room to grow."

Googling Beauty: Q+A with Google's CPG Sales Head, Kevin Kells

I recently got a chance to sit down with Kevin Kells, Google's
national industry leader f or CPG, over lunch at their cafe-
teria. (BTW/FYI: Google has a "cafeteria" that puts Condé's to shame AND it's free for all the employees. Go ahead, have the salmon!)

Kells (pictured, right) had a lot of interesting things to say about online marketing for CPG brands, and he and his team have been doing a lot of work to break beauty and other CPG marketers from the print/tv spot habit.

Case in point: Google commissioned research firm Harris Interactive to measure the effectiveness of CPG ads (for food, beverage and personal care brands) across traditional TV, the YouTube online video environment and ad-embedded click-to-play video. Turns out those Youtube and Web ads were just as good as the traditional TV spot at driving brand affinity and purchase intent.

Case in point #2: Kell's described one of his favorite case studies to me, in which the Googlers did a campaign for Dove’s Ultimate Clear deodorant, with ads on 271 of Google’s network Web sites and 121 groupings of sites geared toward the 18-34-year-old female target. The effort drove brick-and-mortar sales up 25% during the period. What's more, 96% of that extra boost were new customers for the brand.

But Kells isn't just speaking through his nose. Beauty marketers, he feels your pain. In fact, he used to be one, logging some time in the marketing department over at Revlon, where he handled the Almay brand as  vp-marketing. Before that, he worked over at Unilever and even handled the Guinness account over at Diageo, all before joining up with Team Google in January 2006.

Check out the full story here.