Girl marketing

You might have noticed the last ads of Peugeot to sell their car 107, rebaptisted "Envy". What I'm going to talk today about is girl marketing : marketing applied to feminine targets. But before learning all about that, take a look at Peugeot's new TV spot.

"Envy" - Peugeot's ad for the new 107 

What is girl marketing ?

More and more ads today tend to put forward young, active, sexy and urban, in short full of peps, women. Women who are also consumers. 

What do these ads tell their consumers ? Simply that its allright to be young, active, urban and comfortable with consumerism. Yes, for these ads, consumerism is not a default and shopping is a quality, something that puts you, as a young woman, in valor. 

Compared to the 90's ads of Kookai (French clothing company), of which you can see an example below, these ads are very subtle in defending consumerism. Not only is the image of man objectivized (as you can see below in the ad for Guerlain's "La petite robe noire"), but the image of women is put in valor : women are not ruthless womanizers. The only motto is "it's allright to consume"

Man-object - Kookai

I will not adopt a feminist point of view in this article, it's not my role. Yes these ads can be criticized on the image they convey of women in general, but they are still effective in their object, which is why I will make an article about this type of "girl marketing"

Graphic tendencies 

A short point about the graphics of this tendencies

- A first tendency is making very sleek designs. For example, the clip "La petite robe Noire" for the new perfume La petite robe noire (the little black dress) of Guerlain. 

La petite robe noire - Guerlain

Associated with drawers / bloggers such as the very-well known in France Penelope Bagieu (http://www.penelope-jolicoeur.com/), this kind of graphics generally puts in scene black-painted bodies, and very edge cut shapes. Another example is the graphics of My Little Box (http://www.mylittlebox.fr/), company whose social network strategy will be developed later in this article.

- Or, on the other hand you have very colorful, punchy and "round" graphics, like that in the "Envy" ad for Peugeot 107 

Fructis - The evolution of style 

Another example would be the very remarked spot for Fructis shampoos, very modestly named "The evolution of style"

Two example of social networks strategies - My Little Box and La Petite Robe Noire (Guerlain)

My Little Box

My first example: My Little Box. Created last December, the concept of My Little Box comes from a newsletter about good deals in Paris. And then, the creator decided to let her readers take advantage of her advantageous beauty tips and advice. 

The principle is the following: every month (on the 15th of May), you receive your "Little box", which contains 4/5 beauty products and some beauty advice / goodies. Every little box has been themed since the creation of the concept (last December). For example, this month's Little Box's theme was "New York".

My Little Box

The main stream that marketers can use to do a successful social networks strategy aimed at a feminine target is to play on the social aspect of girl marketing: I find it you will agree with me that feminine shopping in general is made in group of girlfriends. 

Social commerce (defined by Fred Cavazza http://www.fredcavazza.net/ as "a sub-ensemble of e-commerce that implies the use of social media to stimulate social interactions and the contributions of users, and facilitating selling goods and services online") is therefore a useful leverage to create a participative relationship with consumers. 

The interactions on the Facebook page of My Little Box are very surprising and the brand generates a lot of UGC (user-generated content). For example, this user who received today her beauty box and who said she would keep the other Facebook fans of the brand posted. As for today, My Little Box has more than 7 500 fans, with more than 1 600 shares of its content. The posts made are not only product placements but also general posts about beauty and style, and can be the latest news about the products as well as art-like photographies, which the community deeply appreciates, thus creating UGC. 

Guerlain

The Facebook page for Guerlain's new perfume La petite robe noire (https://www.facebook.com/lapetiterobenoire) already has 3 350 fans, and has put in place a very effective and more important interactive communication. The little black dress speaks in first person and adresses directly the consumers. On the 3 350 fans of the brand, nearly 25% talk about the brand (share its content), a good virality rate. 

With very short-content-posts, Guerlain get direct responses from the consumers, with only 11 posts (the perfume was released in stores on 5th March).

Let's note that Guerlain's Facebook communication is not this recent. With the official Guerlain Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Guerlain), we can observe a larger social networks strategy. However, the dialog is not the same as Guerlain's official page is more about product placement or introduction of new products. 

Guerlain on Facebook

A strategy which seems less appreciated than the direct strategy used for La petite robe Noire. For example, for more than 201 000 fans for the official Guerlain page, there are around 100 likes for each post from Guerlain. On the other hand, La Petite Robe Noire receives around 100 likes (the numbers indicated here are averages based on the total number of likes for the posts) for each post, with a total of 3 350 fans. 

And Twitter ? 

Guerlain is however not present yet on Twitter, as a brand or as La petite Robe noire. This can be perceived as a lack of audacity, but which is quite comprehensible : luxury is a difficult segment to impone on social networks and even if the Facebook communication for La Petite Robe noire is very successful, its Twitter strategy cannot be similar, and should create specific content for Twitter users. However, it is true that many tweets have been made about La Petite Robe Noire, so it could be a good idea for Guerlain to launch themselves on Twitter, especially if they continue using 

Bonus - Axe and Girl power

As a bonus, a last ad promoting girl power ! An ad quite surprising because coming from Axe, a brand quite known to promote a certain image of women as objects of beauty and sexuality (which does not deny that their marketing campaigns are very effective and nice to watch)

Axe - High Maintenance Girlfriend

IKEA - conveying Swedish humour through publicity

Whether you have been listening to the radio, watching the TV or streamed content on the internet or just looking around you, you cannot have passed by without noticing the "Njut" campaign of Ikea. 

Known as the leader of affordable and yet solid furniture, the swedish company launched a video campaign to promote the "Njut" spirit, which you can translate from Swedish to "enjoy and have fun".

Njut! in the bedroom

The ads that have been broadcasted since the 4th of September have all put forward fun and the inventiveness people can have: out of very simple Ikea furniture and accessories, you can make a whole new universe for yourself.

In this article, I am going to talk about some communication campaigns of Ikea, not just about the Njut initiative. Even though the Njut campaign is quite a pearl of inventiveness and humour, there is more to Ikea's communication than simply Njut!

Two things come out of the analysis of their communication : the use of humour and valorization of the Swedish culture. 
This last element does not only appear in the communication campaigns but also in the Ikea stores (who of you has never wondered what "Klingsbo" means)? The names of the pieces of furniture being in Swedish, it does not facilitate remembering the products (apart from the very famous Billy shelf). However, it does create a very strong brand identity, continued in the communication campaigns, whether it is by the name of the campaign or by putting forward the Swedish culture.

My number 2 proof in images:

Reindeer race in Caen (France)

For my English readers, who I thank to be so many on this blog, the principle of the video was to buzz around the 30 years old of the IKEA store of Caen, France. 

This video is very interesting to analyze semiotically speaking: the pretentious tone of the speaker and classical music clearly contrast with the fun and bizarre idea of making a reindeer race...in France. 

When it comes to fun, I have to come back to the Njut! campaign, of which video spots were relayed by the YouTube channel of IkeaFrance, which has been broadcasting a webseries about the adventures of people who literally squat IKEA stores.

Those videos, short and yet quite addictive (7 to 8 episodes for a total of 4 webseries, plus the hidden camera series) are subtle in valorizing the Ikea products and yet create a strong identification of viewers to the video. 

But as always, I oppose a strong criticism to this campaign, which is the relative absence of Ikea from social networks. It is true that in some cases, the entry of a brand onto social networks is not the best idea, but the humorous caracter of the Njut campaign could have generated a much bigger buzz than that created by the sole youtube Channel. Indeed, when you visualize the webseries videos, the number of views does not exceed 4 000 views per video, against a rate of at least 8 000 views for the video ads that were broadcasted on TV channels.
The relative lack of success of these webseries is even more frustrating when you see the huge buzz generated by the short series "Bref" in France. It's only a shame that Ikea didn't exploit the potential behind these webseries.

Please beware, I am only here talking about IKEA France : Ikea Italy for example is present on Facebook while IKEA USA has a twitter account (most of the time used for after-sales service).

And last but not least, the following video presents to you the recruitment strategy of Ikea in Australia.

Again, a real use of virality.

And for those of you who still can't get enough of Swedish humour, here is a bonus ad released for Ikea Norway.

Norwegian Ikea Ad

Translation : "på tide å flytte hjemmefra" : "time to move out"?

Njut !