Back in 2009, luxury department stores began to scramble to find a solution to plummeting sales, and that solution came in the form of the outlet store. For decades, Nordstrom has enjoyed considerable success from its Rack stores, so why couldn’t Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus do the same?
Well for one thing, many of the luxury brands that sell in these stores don’t like the idea of being sold off at a discount in an outlet store.
In fact many vendors have strict rules about how and when their merchandise is marked down and merchandised – that is, if you’re a brand that has the cachet and critical mass to make stores do your bidding. Look who has the biggest real estate on the sales floor and that will give you an idea of who we’re talking about.
Apparently that hasn’t stopped Neiman Marcus from dabbling in what we would consider very risky behavior, and it’s happening at their “off price” stores called Last Call.
Here, you’ll see some familiar name brands – Diane Von Furstenberg, Chloe, and Helmut Lang, to name a few — but chances are none of that product ever saw the light of an actual Neiman Marcus store. That’s because most of it is either bought or produced exclusively for the outlet stores.
But what happens when some of that merchandise starts to masquerade as the actual prestige pieces sold at Neiman Marcus – and features a Neiman Marcus label?
That’s what we discovered on a couple of visits to the Last Call store in San Francisco, where we saw flagrant imitations of current season Valentino wallets, featuring camouflage and gold studs, merchandised next to actual Valentino neckties.
A sign, standing ambiguously between the two displays, said simply “Valentino.” It appears that Neiman Marcus is taking advantage of customer confusion since they are well-known for carrying authentic luxury brands and products in their full price stores. In all likelihood many who shop at Last Call do so believing that most (if not all) of the products are sale items from those stores.
But wait! Is that the iconic Celine Luggage Tote?
I asked a sales associate who was tidying the area. “No, it’s not – but it looks like one, doesn’t it?” he replied. “So then this isn’t a real Valentino wallet either?” Nope.
So what gives? How does Neiman Marcus get away with it and why haven’t Celine or Valentino reps been in touch with them?
As it turns out, one luxury brand has – one with a very large flagship store only two blocks away and they’re not happy about the imitation products. They’ve been in touch and demanded that Last Call remove the offending product. It should be noted that this luxury brand also sells its collections in full price Neiman Marcus stores.
But when we stopped into the store today, months after seeing the faked bags and accessories in the store, there they were again, and that fake Celine bag? It’s now also for sale on Last Call’s website.
Most consumers might not know it but those in the trade do: the small, upstart advertising firms are increasingly getting better accounts and bringing their creative to some of the most visible and memorable campaigns on television, in print and on digital.
Firms like Y&R, McCann Ogilvy & Mather, BBDO, Wieder+Kennedy, JWT, and Leo Burnett (all regularly in the top 20) are practically household names and count major Fortune 500 firms as their clients. Sure they’re responsible for the majority of Superbowl ads – but that’s changing.
More nimble and arguably more creative “boutique” firms are stepping in to develop work that challenges the kind of creative delivered by the industry veterans.
Jamie Barrett is co-founder of barrettSF, a firm that in the two-plus years of its existence has already won major projects with Rubio’s, Nike, and Major League Baseball, among others.
Jamie cut his teeth with the big dogs: 10 years at Goodby Silverstein & Partners where he contributed to the firm’s work with such brands as Comcast, Quaker, Doritos, and the NBA, and seven years as writer and creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, where he most notably developed creative for Nike, including the Michael Jordan campaigns.
Altogether, the experience gave Jamie the ambition and chops to jump ship and build his own kind of creative agency – one he is still seeking to define. He talks with b. on brand about the changing world of advertising and how soon, we might just be telling stories in two seconds instead of the usual 10 or 15 second spot.
B. ON BRAND: Has barrettSF put a stake in the ground and created an identity for itself as a firm?
JAMIE BARRETT: We haven’t yet. At least that’s our mindset. The moment you think you’ve put a stake in the ground and “created an identity” for yourself is the moment you lose momentum. The truth is, agency reputations can turn in an instant – one piece of transcendent work and you’re part of the conversation. Conversely, if you’re off the creative radar for six months, you slide into irrelevance.
We’ve put several stake-like objects in the ground in our two year-plus history, but none of them represent the stake. To be great in this business you can never stop coming up with new stakes and you can never stop sticking them in the ground.
B: Increasingly we’re seeing the smaller agencies getting the juicier projects. Are major agencies the communications dinosaurs?
JB: It ain’t easy to be huge and great at the same time. It comes back to my earlier point – it doesn’t take a lot of people to make great work, just a few really good people. It seems to me the ideal agency size is somewhere in the 50 to 200 range. Under 50 people, you aren’t a viable agency for major advertisers. You can take on a project, but you simply don’t have the infrastructure to handle their account. Over 200 people, you become a bit Brontosaurus-like. You lumber. You have a hard time reacting and changing directions.
That said, barrettSF aspires to be big. Not mega, but big. Why? Because we want to make an impact in the world, and the larger you are the greater your opportunities. Hopefully, if and when we’re big, we’ll be more like a Velociraptor. They’re pretty nimble.
B: But do you think the challenges are greater today than before, say, 20 or even 30 years ago?
JB: Good question for an old fart like me. I actually was in the business more than 20 years ago, 29 years ago to be exact.
In my mind, the business has gotten dramatically more challenging. My life as a copywriter used to consist of writing print headlines, radio commercials, and TV commercials with a $10,000 budget. You were brought into a conference room, the media plan was presented to you, and then you got a very prescriptive assignment and you fulfilled it.
https://youtu.be/MV9-Ns5dgko
It’s so radically and unrecognizably different in 2015. We are all – if we’re any good – renaissance ad people now. A good creative person is a technologist, media strategist, event planner, amateur Google researcher, and master presenter all wrapped into one. And if we have a little time left over, we’re supposed to come up with good ideas.
B: Social media has been blamed for making it difficult for brands to have a singular voice in speaking to consumers. Do you think that’s true?
JB: It shouldn’t be true, but it can be.
The reality is, one or two people generally create the “voice” of a brand. The words and images that form that voice don’t come from multiple companies or multiple departments, they come from a creative team. A creative team that is guided and informed by many smart people along the way, but still, a creative team.To replicate the “voice” of that team is tough. Particularly when you’re communicating across a wide variety of mediums, and in the case of social, needing to create work in real time.
In my experience, the fewer creative people involved, the more singular the brand’s voice. But that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing view out there in the client world. More and more brands are using multiple creative resources, often working with eight or ten advertising agencies at a time. Google has pulled it off pretty well because they have a strong internal sense of self. But they are an exception.
I’m a big believer in the model of one client-agency partnership. You wouldn’t write a novel with ten different writers, why would you create a brand with ten different ad agencies?
B: How is mobile advertising changing the way we tell a story?
JB: The stock answer is that stories, by necessity, are getting shorter. We used to tell sixty and thirty-second stories. We then learned to tell fifteen and ten-second stories. Then Vine came along and taught us to tell six second stories. And now the latest app, Whatsyourpoint?, is forcing us to complete our stories in just two seconds — Okay, I made that last app up. But you know it’s coming.
My point is, I don’t think longer-form stories will ever lose their appeal. I still see Hollywood making movies. I still see people addicted to sixty-minute TV shows. And I still see YouTube videos with 240 million views that are several minutes long. If something is good, we will watch. Whether it’s short or long, projected on a mountainside, or miniaturized on our phone.
Jamie Barrett is founder and creative director at barrettSF. Follow them on twitter @barrett_sf and Facebook.
Before Baselworld even started the buzz was about smart watches, but if you know anything about Swiss timepieces manufacturers, you know that creating a watch that is supposedly “smart” is still the least of their concerns.
That could be changing if the smart watch gains any momentum with consumers, but that’s not what this show is about anyway – not yet.
That’s because Baselworld is all about the ultimate in high luxury timepieces and jewelry and the people who shop here aren’t looking for something to replace their iphone when it comes to telling the time or the weather.
Still, that didn’t stop some brands, most notably Mondaine and Frederique Constant, who went ahead and showed their interpretation of a Swiss timepiece with smart capabilities.
Meanwhile Gucci president and CEO Marco Bizzari stole some of their thunder and held a press conference with Black Eyed Peas frontman, Will.i.am to announce that they had inked a deal with to develop a “fashion-ology” version of a watch originally created through Will.i.am’s own company, i.am+.
For us, half the fun of going to Baselworld is seeing just how much money brands will spend on building utterly spectacular pavilions (please, don’t call them “booths”) that will only be seen for six days.
All of the brands are careful to monitor who comes in and reserves a section of their showrooms to entertain their buyers in high style.
If you weren’t on the list then chances are you wouldn’t be able to look at more than the front door and the handsome models they hire to guard the gates. Like heaven, some had their own purgatory, a kind of pre-showroom-showroom where a select few could gain access and feel like they got somewhere. But usually behind yet another set of doors, is an ultra-exclusive space full of champagne and an even fewer select group of beautiful people with very deep pockets.
That’s where Taiwanese jewelry designers Wayne Wang and Yao-Lien Wang were hoping to sneak into at Armani, if they could just get past those tall, black-clad men.
“I could hear people laughing and talking behind this glossy black wall and every now and then the door would open and these Armani staffers in black would come striding out and you’d get a peek at this major party going on,” says Yao-Lien.
Chanel, Hermès, Patek Phillippe, spared no expense this year, with spaces that felt anything but temporary. “In most cases, it doesn’t feel like they’re terribly concerned with selling their products,” says Wayne. “At the end of the day, these are conceptual installations designed to position the brand and underscore their ability to be innovation leaders in the luxury sector.”
Chanel, in all its black-and-white glory, managed to do both, launching the limited edition Premiere Flying Tourbillon watch. Time is precious for the precious few who can own such a watch, and with only twelve in existence, you better hope you live long enough to enjoy it.
But for those who are truly connoisseurs of fine watches, they weren’t messing around with fashion brands, they were heading over to the likes of Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Richard Mille, and A. Lang & Söhne. This is the Billionaire Boys Club for those who think nothing of dropping a million or more for a watch.
Our favorite is the Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile, which features two faces (front and back) to make room for a perpetual calendar, sunset time indicator, a second time zone, and some other things I was never quite able to understand. Nevermind, I’ll hopefully have time to learn how to use it.
Meanwhile there were still reporters running around trying to find a good hook for their smart watch story even if there wasn’t much to show for it.
Besides Frederique Constant’s Horological Smartwatch, Mondaine unveiled its own version which boasts technology that monitors activity and sleep as well as a bi-directional communications feature which connects with designated devices such as a phone or tablet. I’ve always been fond of Mondaine’s use of Helvetica Bold but I don’t need a watch to micromanage my sleep and exercise patterns.
There are, of course, dozens of other watch brands who exhibit at Baselworld that you never end up hearing about, and you have to feel just a little sorry for them.
We couldn’t help but notice MB&F, which in our opinion, may be the ugliest watch we’ve ever seen. The “Space Pirate” apparently takes inspiration from sci-fi and anime comics. Limited to only 50 pieces, you’ll be able to enjoy the fact that there will only be a few people as peculiar and geeky as you who would wear such a thing.
Baselworld 2016 will be from March 17 – 26. For more information visit http://www.baselworld.com.
Back in the dark days of the last recession, big box brands like Walmart, Staples, Walgreens, and Target took advantage of the high inventory of smaller, neighborhood storefronts and experimented with small-scale versions of their bigger selves.
It was actually an inspired idea but once the economy took off, most abandoned the concepts and consolidated their efforts back into expanding their high volume stores.
Not so with Target, which in 2012 developed CityTarget stores designed to appeal to urban shoppers. The average size of a CityTarget is 80,000 square feet compared to their full-size 100,000 square foot stores.
This year the brand will open 15 more stores including eight Target Express locations. Like the CityTarget concept, the goal with TargetExpress is to deliver very customized merchandise solutions to a specific market in retail locations they previously could never consider.
So why the rush to move into a format more commonly owned by the likes of Circle K and 7-11?
Maybe because Walgreens has wasted no time in rolling out all manner of concept stores, whether big, lavish flagship stores with lavish beauty departments and sushi bars, or their “Corner W” concept. Since the company purchased Duane Reade in 2010 ($for 1.1billion), the brand has made short work of aggressively building out its stores and moving boldly into the prepared foods category.
>> Read our previous post on Walgreen’s move into food
The first TargetExpress store opened last summer in Minneapolis and was only steps away from the University of Minnesota campus, so it came stocked with grab-and-go food, an edited assortment of grocery items, and the kinds of electronics students might need like microwaves, toaster ovens, and blow dryers.
The laggard in the overall market continues to be CVS, which has been slow to evolve their store concepts across the board, and incidentally was the last to eliminate tobacco sales. Both Walgreens and Target jumped on the no-tobacco bandwagon in order to further rationalize their pharmacy and wellness concepts.
http://youtu.be/aXTXHkgJuok
San Francisco continues to be a major destination for retailers looking to open new doors, and it’s no wonder.
Silicon Valley’s hoodie generation is (finally) growing up and spending those start up dollars on all manner of luxury brands, although Shhhhh… the more discreet the better.
Not so for the bay area’s growing Asian population, another key target, which is an added bonus for brands looking to extend their reach beyond the sneaker set.
They’re also willing to pay the price: rents are up 30% over the past year, and according to a recent Cushman Wakefield report, the average Union Square space goes for $650 per square foot per year, making San Francisco the sixth most expensive market in the country, next to New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue, Times Square, Madison Avenue and Lower Fifth Avenue and Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive.
So say goodbye to that very strange Porsche Design store on the corner of Grant and Geary and say hello to a massive Dolce & Gabbana which will occupy the space as well as additional one next door. They’re also planning to take over part of the building’s first floor. Rumor has it the owner had no trouble finding someone else to take such a prime space and was happy to show Porsche the door.
Meanwhile construction has already begun on the new Martin Margiela store at 134 Maiden Lane, just across from Chanel. MM has already received loads of positive press with the recent appointment of designer John Galliano, and his first show in London got rave reviews.
Down the lane you’ll also find Italian label Marni getting ready to break ground on their new store. They’ll be in good company with Brunello Cuccinelli just around the corner.
Powell Street’s Uniqlo will be in good company with Jins, the Japanese mega-retailer of glasses and frames, which will be opening at 151 Powell this spring. That’s what we call a nice adjacency. The 5,000 square foot space will be home to 1200 styles of frames and shoppers can get their prescription filled in thirty minutes flat. We can assume that the store will resemble those designed by Japanese firm Suppose Design Office.
It’s no secret that Moncler has been enjoying steady sales of its pricey puffers at Barneys New York, so it makes sense that they took the lease for 212 Stockton Street.
Yes, that’s currently Loro Piana’s space but don’t worry, LP will be moving over to Ferragamo’s old spot in-between Louis Vuitton and Macy’s. Now they get to be the ones having to deal with women asking for the Macy’s bra department.
We stand and salute with the deepest respect those who lost their lives and were injured in this week’s tragic and cowardly act of violence on the journalists and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo.
While Voltaire never actually said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (it was actually his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall), it hardly matters; they are words that confirm what we all know we must do.
On this side of the Atlantic, the words of George Washington underscore those sentiments and remind us that the exchange of ideas, the reflections on our life and times, and yes, even satire, keeps us vital, alive, and questioning. We shall forever be beholden to the gifts of democracy as long as we unite to keep it alive.
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
So far, this hasn’t been a very merry Christmas for most retailers, and you can bet there won’t be any sudden surprises at this point. America has shopped and now they’re taking advantage of a desperate retailer.
Brands such as J. Crew, Prada, American Eagle, and Abercrombie & Fitch have all reported less than favorable third quarter earnings. A&F’s board of directors wasted little time in showing CEO Michael Jeffries to the door, offering him a “retirement.”
If you had a shiver that recalled the gloom of our most recent recession, you weren’t alone. What can we do better, and what can we expect from 2015?
We thought it would be interesting to hear from some of our friends and colleagues about their vision for 2015. From all of them we heard a collective Om.
Now breathe and say it with me: Om. Omnichannel.
Surprisingly, there are plenty who still think omnichannel sounds more like a Buddhist chant than a business strategy. Designer John Varvatos says the customer of 2015 will still demand just as much – if not more – brand engagement.
“Consumers are more educated than ever and they’re looking for the best product, the best quality, and the best experience. We want our customer to have a 360-degree experience when they are shopping with us. We want them to be fully engaged at the store level, on our website, and through our social media channels.”
So why are so many retailers still so challenged? It might be because too many C-Suite executives slice and dice the customer experience and aren’t always using the same methods to validate their data.
Many still look at their budget outlays the same way they did, say, ten years ago: segmented and with no relation to how the rest of their business operates. The e-commerce team, marketers, merchandisers, and store staff, all marching to their own drummer.
Meanwhile the successful retailer is operating seamlessly and paying close attention to what the customer is responding to.
Just ask Barry Bourbon, principal and retail practice leader at Gensler’s San Francisco office.
“As technology continues to blur the lines between physical and online retail, omnichannel retail will become simply ‘retail’,” says Barry. “Because of this brands and retailers are relying heavily on their most loyal fans to not only help develop relevant and innovative products, but also to define the setting in which those new products are experienced.”
Japanese fast-fashion brand UNIQLO made major strides in 2014, but Larry Meyer, CEO of UNIQLO USA acknowledges there is still more to be done in building a seamless brand experience, as the retailer increases its foothold in the United States.
“Engaging with customers through interactive technology will continue to evolve and grow to meet the ever-changing needs of the customer,” says Larry. “This means combining both brick and mortar retail with e-commerce. And I believe this will only continue to grow in importance in 2015.”
In other words, the successful brand lets the customer feel like they’re in the driver’s seat.
“The future of retail in 2015 will undoubtedly include an increased focus on one to one personalization,” says Heather Marie, Founder and CEO of Shoppable. “That means better customer experience and a wider-spread adoption of technologies that increase the point-of-sale experience– including things like universal checkouts.”
Heather makes an important point. Consider that only a few years ago, many of this country’s major retail executives continually misunderstood the Millennial shopper and made costly mistakes in trying to cater to them.
“Both Millennials and their younger siblings, Generation Z, are continually putting their loyalty into brands that involve them early on, allow them to share ideas and thoughts, and see those ideas realized,” says Barry.
“Brands that develop social platforms for customers to easily create and share content, personalize and customize product, and access relevant information will continue to gain momentum.”
2015 will also see a growth in marketing strategies where advertising emphasizes a call to action and awareness, giving the customer a feeling of being a brand partner – not just a customer.
John Varvatos saw that effect with this season’s fall campaign.
“Our Fall 2014 ad campaign featuring Ringo Starr featured a social media initiative that supported the David Lynch Foundation,” says John, referring to the non-profit organization that provides transcendental meditation classes to help at-risk youth, among others.
“This kind of integrated marketing campaign allowed fans across the globe to get involved in a cause. For us, it really opened our eyes to how consumers are hungry for content and to participate in something that is meaningful. We want to take this approach for everything we do.”
REI, Inc. used a similar approach with a brand advisors program.
“They asked these advisors to give their opinions and insight on both products and the store experience, and effectively created this community where ideas flow freely,” says Barry. “The net result for REI is that this is insight that helps them to direct future decisions for the brand.”
Experiments in localized retail experiences – where customers can personalize products and stores are designed to echo the style of a particular town or neighborhood – continues to gain traction. This Christmas, we’ve seen a lot of examples of pop-ups becoming business-as-usual rather than just a marketing exercise.
At San Francisco’s Westfield Mall, Artisan Square has been getting buzz, a multibrand shop that showcases dozens of local start up entrepreneurs.
“I think localized retail that emphasizes the smaller designer or craftsperson will still be a key theme in 2015,” says Anne Marie Luthro, CEO of AML Insights.
“Call it ‘artisanal’ or ‘small batch,’ this is the kind of thing that still draws shoppers seeking newness and authenticity, and brings a different dynamic to traditional malls.”
On a brisk November day, a well-heeled crowd of mostly French people competes to get the most artsy shot possible of the newly opened Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
The highly sculptural structure is a commanding presence, every ounce a Frank Gehry project and when one comes upon it, it does indeed take one’s breath away. The crowd hangs back from handing over their tickets, still too dazzled by the building’s remarkable engineering and taking all manner of shots of the building, as if afraid it will float away from them.
Once inside, however, rather than rush in to see the exhibitions, they queue up for lunch at Frank, the museum’s namesake restaurant. Some things do not change in France: Le dejeuner est sacré.
While Hermes and Cartier have long had their own art collections and eponymous art museums, LVMH did not. The world’s largest luxury conglomerate was perhaps too busy making money.
In fact, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, is one of the most prolific contemporary art collectors in the world, but few have been privy to just what his collection held – until now.
Eight years in the making, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is Arnault’s carefully planned dream made real. It had to be designed by the right architect, someone who could mastermind something that garnered the same kind of accolades as say, the Guggenheim Bilbao. So it’s no surprise that Arnault chose Frank Gehry.
“I dream of designing a magnificent vessel symbolizing France’s profound cultural vocation,” said Gehry, when he was first approached to do the project. That’s the kind of bold statement that gets a client excited.
You could easily replace the word “France” with “Louis Vuitton” or even, “Bernard Arnault.” The fact is none of the world’s museums could exist without a benefactor with very deep pockets. As the fifth richest man in the world and the richest in France, those are deep pockets indeed.
At nearly 126,000 square feet, the monolithic structure houses both a permanent collection (most of it Arnault’s) and eventually, a rotating roster of commissions and temporary exhibitions.
It’s been likened to a cloud, the sails of a boat (a telling description, since it aligns with Louis Vuitton’s sponsorship of the World Yachting Cup), an iceberg, and the shoals of fish, an awesome, almost extraterrestrial sight that floats above the lushness of the Bois du Bologne.
Do not expect a Renoir, Matisse, or Picasso here. This is a modernist cathedral for those who worship the most avant-garde of contemporary art: a giant rose (Isa Genzken’s Rose II, 2007) towers over the arrival hall. A sandwich of landfill featuring Nike sneakers and random garbage (Adrian Villar Rojas’, Where the Slaves Live, 2014). A graphically brilliant display of neon tubes (Bertrand Lavier’s Empress of India, 2005).
The museum, however, remains the star attraction and one of the museum’s first exhibitions is about the Gehry’s design process and innovation. The exhibition reveals the countless iterations in both drawing and model form of the building’s evolution. The massive glass panels for the building required the creation of a special furnace in order to manufacture the specific curved shapes and projection capacity imposed by the designer.
It’s not often that we are given access to the whole range of hits — and misses — as a designer moves closer towards a brilliant idea.
One model displays what must have been an early awkward moment between client and designer, where an obvious design gestures is meant to flatter but instead falls flat: the iconic Louis Vuitton monogram is rendered as a multi-storey abstraction of a trunk. One sighs with relief that it never saw the light of day.
Nevertheless some vintage trunks are embedded in the wall of the restaurant and gift shop, a reminder that this is the house that Louis Vuitton built, the humble malletier who no doubt never dreamed that his name would grace the front of a museum in Paris.
Watch a time-lapse the building of the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
If you were a child of the 1980’s you probably winced whenever you saw someone with logo luggage. They seemed so old or worse, nouveau riche.
Nothing screamed that more than MCM, which always felt like the poor man’s Louis Vuitton. That baby diarrhea brown, the thick vinyl, and those enormous logos were so overtly vulgar you just had to turn away. Nothing said 1980’s more than Dynasty, and Linda Evans as Crystal Carrington, is seen arriving at a hotel with a truckload of MCM.
But that was then.
The fashion world is always nostalgic about itself and its past which is why there is a constant grave digging going on in the cemetery of dead brands.
Entrepreneur Arnaud de Lummen has built an entire business out of resuscitating so-called “sleeping beauties,” brands like Vionnet, Paul Poiret, and Goyard.
What’s the appeal? Its retro nouveau riche quality and the fact that it isn’t Vuitton.
But MCM?
Well no, that’s not one he pounced on, but in 2005, South Korea’s Sungjoo did and is making MCM the uber-luxury brand for the modern millennial. For the moment, that millennial has mostly been Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, but the mania over the brand is spilling into Europe and the U.S.
What’s the appeal?
Its retro nouveau riche quality and the fact that it isn’t Vuitton, for one.
And also that for an entirely new generation, MCM seems so trashy-chic, so ironically vulgar: think Miley Cyrus. It’s also the fact that in a short amount of time, the brand has managed to get into the right hands of influencers – the right influencers.
The brand, which was launched in 1976 by a German named Michael Cromer (thus, Michael Cromer München) had its heyday in mid-80’s with 250 stores and big lavish advertising featuring Cindy Crawford in Herb Ritts-lensed advertising. Diana Ross traveled with it on tour. So did Siegfried and Roy. Now you get the picture.
But who remembers that? The brand is already on a fast-track to being a must-have for anyone who watches reality television or downloaded Taylor Swift’s 1989. South Korean pop star Rain fronts the brand and the usual suspects (Rihanna, Beyoncé, Ludacris) have all been photographed carrying the brand’s iconic backpack – the best seller.
A glance to the street reveals mostly fashion kids and students carrying MCM, but don’t let that fool you in thinking the brand is a bargain. A tote will run you close to $2300, while a messenger bag costs $500. It’s a sweet spot because they still manage to undercut their competitors.
In 2011 the brand hit a reported $400m in sales, and then jumped to $500m in 2013. A stock market launch projecting sales of $1.5m is rumored to be on the horizon, but for now the goal is big growth, this time outside of Asia, which contributes to roughly a third of the brand’s growth. Last month the brand scored boutique space in Harrods, with an additional store planned early next year.
But wait – a brand without a story? A luxury brand has to have a story, right?
Unlike Hermès or even Vuitton, this is a brand with no story and that’s just fine for today’s young consumer.
While my colleagues in the branding world might admonish any brand for skimping on story, I think there are always examples of brands that have none and do just fine. MCM is about association, an association with a brief period of time that’s still on-trend – the 80’s — and the way that brand overtly mimics traditional luxury brands.
There is plenty to commiserate about the current state of affairs with commercial airline travel and few carriers have been able to cut through the noise of dissent and realistically maintain their profit margins without compromising quality. Virgin Airlines has managed to make a considerable impact on travelers with its cheeky advertising and sexy cabin lighting schemes.
But for far longer than Virgin, it’s Southwest Airlines which has consistently earned high marks for best in class service at a competitive price.
When global design firm Lippincott was called on to update the brand assets and identity system, it quite literally, cut to the heart of the matter.
“From our first design criteria presentation we made a very clear statement to our core team and then to senior management, that the issue for Southwest was one of uncovering the true Southwest, not about creating a new Southwest.”
That’s Rodney Abbot, senior partner of design at Lippincott, who spoke with us about how he and his team met the design challenge. “We stated from day one that the symbol for Southwest was the heart.”
Until then, Southwest had utilized two separate logos: the “Winged Heart” and the “Take-Off” logo (a plane in flight over the name, ‘Southwest.’) The Lippincott drilled down deep into Southwest’s core competencies to bring further weight to their choice of a heart logo. And while adding a heart to much of anything might seem hackneyed, Abbot more than begs to differ.
“A core ingredient of that character is a ‘fun LUV-ing attitude’, something that customers have come to expect from Southwest,” explains Abbot. “The challenge as the brand matures is showing customers and potential customers that the business is also a really buttoned-up operation. That fact hasn’t always cut through, so while the new identity maintains a playful, humorous tone, it does so in a very deliberate and thoughtful way.”
Lippincott’s strategy included giving Southwest a fresh coat of paint, in the same signature color palette but even more saturated and richer. From the planes to the check-in gates to the cocktail napkins, color plays a key role in the brand’s new bold visual identity.
“After all, a vibrant experience is what customers expect from Southwest. So we deepened the blue and saturated the red and yellow. We also added silver stripes to separate the colors, accentuating the heightened contrast between them, and introducing a more refined note to the identity system.”
To the casual consumer, one might ask if a major rebrand translates into higher airfares? After all, who’s going to cover the cost of all those buckets of paint?
“The rollout of the identity is being integrated into the existing timelines for repainting planes and upgrading airports,” assures Abbot. “That said, any brand needs to always ask the question: are we true to who we are, and are we connecting with people in a way that’s relevant and fresh?
We second that wholeheartedly (sorry, that pun just snuck in), simply because any brand worth its salt should always be forecasting the cost of future upgrades to their brand experience.
We’re happy to see that Southwest is flying its true colors and can think of quite a few more carriers who could use the same help. Hello, US Airways?