Fashion Notebook

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."

Marketing Ethics in The Valley of the Stardolls

  Stardoll.com, a social-play Web site for 9 to 17 year-old girls, announced this week that it has inked a deal with supermodel/auf'er Heidi Klum to promote her latest jewelry collection.

Essentially, the deal shakes out in a Second Life kind of way. Heidi gets her own store, located in Stardoll's "Star Plaza" shopping center, where the girls can look through her collection, buy "virtual versions" of the product that they can use to bedeck their avatars, and talk shop about fashion. They can even look through Heidi's "closet" of favorite handbags, shoes, clothes and awards show outfits. Oh and she gets this avatar (see right) that doesn't really do graphic justice to Klum's on-screen beauty.

“I don’t just think about it as selling jewelry, [but] I try to make it about who I am,” Klum told me over the phone. “I think it’s great to be in connection with young girls who are interested in fashion . . . It allows [the girls] to interact with those celebrities they are fans of and get an insight into what that person’s favorite clothes are.”

Klum isn't the first to go this way with Stardoll. A partnership with LVMH in December landed DKNY (see store format below) and Sephora in the space, and before that young starlets like Hillary Duff, the Olsens, and Avril Lavigne had also set up shop on the site. And there are more to come! The site, which claims to have 12 million visitors, is seeking other high-end partnerships with brands including Stella McCartney, Vivienne Tam, Liz Claiborne and Henri Bendel.

No doubt, digi-deals like these are already popping up everywhere, but the fact that they're luxury players that are effectively marketing to kids—essentially recruiting future shoppers while their brand loyalties aren't yet set in stone, not to mention further glamorizing a materialist marketplace—seemed just a little bizarre to me.

So I rang up Susan Linn over at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to  get her thoughts. Picking a fight, I know, but I thought she might be able to shed some light on this trend.

“The real purpose of social networking sites for young kids like Stardoll, BarbieGirl and even Webkinz and Club Penguin, is to train kids to shop,” she told me. “It’s a good thing for the corporations to make a lot of bucks, but it’s not a good thing for kids. What these companies want to do it get children in the habit of consumption . . . and instill the idea that they deserve luxury products."

But is that Stardoll's fault, really? If we're supposed to stop instilling kids with the idea that they deserve expensive things, why don't we just cancel any number of reality and "scripted reality" shows, not to mention MTV shows like "Cribs" or VH1's "The Fabulous Life Of" series? Certainly those shows glamorize opulent wealth and rampant consumerism.

To whit, Paul Kurnit, president of Kid Shop and a marketing professor at Pace University, told me that the children using sites like Stardoll are already exposed to hyper-consumer culture via television shows like those mentioned above.

“Luxury is aspiration and a lot of those brands and those celebrities are fashion and lifestyle brand badges that today's teen and tween girls want a piece of,” he said, adding that he feels Stardoll does a good job of delivering for both its users and brands.

So, dear reader, what's the verdict? Is Stardoll out of line, or is it merely keeping with the times?