Focused textile businesses are the new eldorado

Today I am going to talk to you about a trend more and more striking everyday in the French clothing industry : hyper-specialization. Three examples of successful young entreprises : Archiduchess, Six & Sept and Ben & Fakto. I will first present these startups, and then analyze their social networks strategy: what works and what doesn't (with a focus on the very-debated Pinterest network).

Archiduchesse 

You might have heard of them recently about their being copied by Chinese producers (see here for more details). And if not, here's the story : Archiduchesse is exclusively selling socks, all made in France : ankle socks, lisle socks, warm socks, high socks and tights : no more no less than these five varieties, all sold in more than 20 colors each (48 colors maximum for some socks)

Their website is very well constructed : navigation is very intuitive, agreable, and you never end up in some remote place of the website from which it is hard to come back from. 

A very nice initiative (creation in 2006), that has been talked about a lot this year, and makes a successful business. For example, in March, they sold 4 507 pairs of socks (see there for more numbers)

Ben & Fakto

Ben&Fakto is an ethical e-business shop: 10% of each order is invested in micro-credit projects. The designers chosen are quite remote from traditional ethical or fairtrade clothing. High-priced, the clothes, jewellery, shoes and accessories are clearly designed and fashionable. 

The e-shop offers a great variety, from ethical condoms (yes that exists), organic wear to hand-made necklaces. You can choose to segment your basket according to clothes category (trousers, shirt), or to the origin of the product (fair-trade, made in France, organic...)

For the record, Ben & Fakto was created last year, at Startup Weekend Lille (a great concept that I encourage you to see for yourself here), has been incubated by EDHEC business school: a very successful business. 

Six & Sept 

Six & Sept focuses on selling V-neck sweaters and cardigans, with original touches of color: on the end of the arms for sweaters, and around the buttons for cardigans. 

They have clearly positioned themselves as a luxury brand: their cardigans are made in Venice, are in egyptian cotton, and the brand universes adopts the code of Parisian luxury. Their photographies are art-oriented, their Parisian store is called a gallery: a quickly identifiable positioning and market. 

The brand was launched on 30th March 2012, so its too soon to say if the brand will be successful, but it is incubated (like Ben&Fakto) by EDHEC business school and clearly surfs on the dandy fashion trend that has been invading our streets: two undeniable ingredients for success.

Commun points of the brands

• Relatively high prices : 4,50€ a pair of low ankle socks on Archiduchesse, 90 € for a skirt on Ben&Fakto, 110€ for a cardigan on Six&Sept. The three brands clearly aim at a trendy, fashioned-oriented, and responsible clientele : young and mostly urban. 

• Hyperfocused on their core products for Archiduchesse and Six&Sept, and very coherent on their consumer promise for Ben&Fakto.

Social networks strategies

	Ben & Fakto	Six & Sept	Archiduchesse
FACEBOOK
Number of Facebook fans	3 075	360	13 093
Number of likes per post	10 in average	2	20
Number of comments per post	4 in average	None	5
TWITTER
Number of tweets	1 141	Not present on Twitter.	845
Number of followed on Twitter	282		93
Number of followers on Twitter	529		2 033
PINTEREST
Number of Pinterest boards	5	1	The brand doesn’t have an account on Pinterest
Number of Pinterest pins	61	1	23 pins from Pinterest users
Number of Pinterest followers	38	1
Number of Pinterest users followed	15	10
Number of Pinterest likes	5	0

Ben & Fakto

It’s too bad users don’t interact more on the Facebook page: the brand has a great (direct, interactive and funny) communication through its internet site and its newsletter, and the tone is not present enough on the Facebook page.

They have chosen a third-person communication, a great humourous tone in the newsletter, but perhaps not that well adapted to Facebook. Maybe bringing in more humour would help Ben & Fakto generating more interactions. Their post which got the most likes was a post in which they parodied an old French add (below) : maybe they should do that more often.

On the other hand, a great Twitter communication in which they engage a direct dialogue with their customers : people posting about / to Ben&Fakto get very quick answers. (@benfakto) 

On Pinterest though, their posts are not viral enough to generate more content from the followers of the brand.

Six & Sept

The brand is very new, but the low level of engagement of their Facebook fans leads to thinking they should invest in their social networks strategy.

As they themselves generate quite a lot of content they could incite more their customers to interact with them: by giving direct incentives (reductions), or making them participate in online games for example.

Moreover, the brand has a clear art connotation; encouraging photo contests, in an art style (not only of Six & Sept products) could generate a higher level of engagement of their customers.

Likewise, their use of Pinterest looks a bit hesitant: between not using Pinterest and using fully Pinterest they have chosen to be on Pinterest but produce very few content: maybe producing more content (for example relaying the content already present on the Facebook page and on the website) would be more appropriate.

Archiduchesse 

Archiduchesse's posts on Facebook are not very viral yet, but users seem to post a lot more content directly on the Facebook wall of Archiduchesse: to say hello, to make jokes, to say that they have just made their first order and are very proud of it.

The beginnings of Archiduchesse on Facebook were quite hesitant: it seems like Archiduchesse itself did not quite know what to post and what not to post on their Facebook page, but now that the editorial line is well defined, they get higher engagement rates. An advice: encourage and put under the light pictures that customers take of their socks (yes, they do take pictures of your socks: see Pinterest)

Like Ben&Fakto, Archiduchesse has a great Twitter communication, direct and interactive with consumers and people who post about or to @archiduchesse. 

And a last good point for Archiduchesse is its absence from Pinterest. By letting its customers talk themselves about their products on Pinteret, Archiduchesse has chosen not to take the risk (time, cost, reputation) of launching themselves on Pinterest. The virality of the brand is still not very high, but the fact that at least 23 users have chosen to post pictures of Archiduchesse socks show a great brand attractiveness.

A quick conclusion

These three examples show us that diversifying your activity is not always the best business, and that very focused businesses are good business models : because customers clearly identify your core competencies and job, you are seen as an expert on your business, and more qualitative than your non-focused competitors.

A quick point also on Pinterest: brands successful on Pinterest are either brands that engage a clear dialogue with their customers (like Kotex for example) by repinning content from users and identifying key Pinterest users that could be their customers, or brands that let customers speak for themselves : in-between strategies take the risk of a waste of time and of return on investment. 

 

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 !

Is ecology wearable ? Part 2

Remember, two months ago I was telling you about Rapanui and Natimeo, two brands that had started to develop organic wear. 

This month, I tested two Natimeo products, offered by the brand and compared them with the Rapanui tee-shirt I had
(see http://newmarketingexperience.blogspot.com/2011/12/rapanui-vs-natimeo-is-ecology-wearable.html) 

         

On your left, the Arpenaz 400 L pants, with mixed components (part organic coton, part spandex). 

And on your right, a 100% organic coton tee-shirt. 

Both the pants and the tee-shirt are very confortable, easy to wear and don't loose their colours. Which is why I have a solid "Yes" answer to the question "is ecology wearable ?"

The comparison I would make with Rapanui is style-wise : being designed for sports, Natimeo products are not as stylish as Rapanui's. One of their first products was a limited edition teeshirt with the slogan "recycle, reduce, reuse. Too bad it's still not in stores...

My question: how can you communicate on organic wear ? 

The first intuition of many people told about organic wear is to say "organic wear... what's that ? I thought only food was organic". Therefore, in order to clarify your positioning, the first step as an organic wear producer is to make your consumers aware about what is organic wear. This way, your consumers will understand why choosing organic wear when they need new clothes is a more ethical and responsible choice. 

  

An example: Merinos wool by Natimeo

As you might have expected, I also recommend using social networks to communicate on your brand (assuming you are launching a line of eco-wear or organic products). For now, Natimeo is not yet present on social networks, but as it is a new brand and that its products are sold under the label "Oxylane", it is not a major default. 

What I want to insist in this post is on the importance that ecology is taking not only in theoretical debates but also in business. Look around you and you will see that more and more brands try to develop towards more ecological responsability or even base their entire business model on more respect of Nature. 

Natimeo is the perfect illustration of this tendency : it is part of a historical international group and yet it takes into account these new dynamics. It is very likely that the share of Natimeo products in the store shelves of our Decathlon stores will dramatically increase in the following years, so watch out, ecology is coming, and its growing fast !

How can a brand create traffic on its Facebook page?

The question of the day is: how can brands create real and sustainable traffic on their Facebook pages ?

Many solutions are possible but today I will only present three recent and possibly most pertinent ones to you! 

Use humour

One of my favorite pages as a marketer and as a consumer is the Oasis Facebook page (for the record, Oasis is a French brand of softdrinks). Content is regularly diffused on the page (https://www.facebook.com/oasisfunpage) : every 2-4 days or so, and yet it attracts many likes and comments per post. You can at least count a bare minimum of 1 000 likes and 60 comments per post. 

Why this success? The graphic quality of Oasis' marketing campaigns does have an important share in that, but my belief is that Oasis has understood what social networkers want from them : humour. All the non-socialmedia ads of Oasis are based on fun and humour and the same tone is conveyed through their Facebook page. 

A subtle technique : using the news

Two examples, inspired from the very recent victory of Jean Dujardin, first French actor to ever win the Oscar of the best actor. 

Oasis- The Poirtist

Ernie the hedgehog is back - The Grattist

Personalize your content

When you are a brand, you have to produce content in order to maintain a certain level of attention from your fans, but you also have to thank your fans. Many brands today don't hesitate in thanking frequently their fans, by posting phrases such as "thanks for being so many to like our page" in their weekly posts. Some brands go further and make dedicated fan-thankyou actions. 

These type of operations can be adressed to the community of fans as a whole  or search maximum individualization. Here are two examples:

Heinz's thank you post after reaching their 50 000th Facebook fan

Oasis' thank you after reaching 2 million Facebook fans. 

For this operation, Oasis created a special application, which took your profile picture and included it in a portrait starring a fruit of the brand and a thank you note. 

Create a competition between social networkers

The principle here would be using first the network of social networkers already fans of a brand, and the buzz potential of a brand to create a truly interactive contest. This could be for example a photo contest in which fans have to take pictures of themselves with a product of the brand in order to win the prize, with the condition that the picture with the maximum number of likes on Facebook wins the contest. 

Why does this work? Because fans who play the game become highly involved in the contest and generally motivate a high number of their Facebook friends in order to win the contest.

And thanks to a virality effect, assuming the brand has done previous efficient communication, the site and contest attracts thousands of curious people. 

My example: the Heinz Art Challenge

The challenge: draw online, with virtual ketchup, a composition of your choice on a plate in order to win the printing of your drawing on 3 unique plates. 

List of winners of the contest 

 Ad for the promotion of the Heinz Art Challenge 

However, there is a danger of non-implication of those fans and a risk of a very ephemeral relationship. Which is why brands should not only use contests in order to create traffic on their Facebook pages and should vary their initiatives. 

Thanks to all of you readers who contribute to my pleasure in writing this blog. Don't hesitate to answer to the posts, give your advice or disagree with me. Debate is highly encouraged ! 

Sponges and marketing

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered about the marketing strategies of rather odd or basic products, such as sponges. Can you really do an innovative marketing strategy to sell sponges ?

As you might have guessed, the answer is yes of course. But, how, you ask me ?

The marketing and communication strategy I chose to focus upon is Spontex’s, a french brand created in the 1930's and whose principal product is sponges... 

In 1999, Spontex launched a communication campaign starring a cute-as-can-be hedgehog, fallen in love with a sponge, whose characteristic was to be as scratching as the very same hedgehog.

Since then, the hedgehog has been the unstopped symbol of Spontex’s campaign, which allowed creating a somehow very cheeky tone in the very unsexy universe of sponges.

This campaign caused a huge buzz when it was broadcasted, and lead me to a question : how did the brand maintain the tone of the campaign?

The use of social media by Spontex is surprisingly very successful. The Facebook fan page (https://www.facebook.com/spontex) for the brand rassembles 197 419 fans. Their facebook strategy 

- Official posts, at least once a week

- Maintaining the same cheeky, and quite daring sometimes, tone as for the TV or print ads. For example, they have been publishing recently once a week, the "hot resolutions" of Ernie (the hedgehog, whose name appears to be quite known to Spontex lovers) 

Resolution n°9 - "In 2012, I will start music"

The hot resolutions are very followed by the fans of the facebook page and get between 100 and more than 400 likes, and 20 comments per post. 

One interesting thing to note is also the international success of Spontex's communication. Lots of amateur fan pages are created on Facebook, among which you can find a Ernie fan page in Germany (264 fans). 

- A harmonious communication between the print ads, the official website and the facebook page. Impertinent tone, and direct phrases are used : the allusions to sex are quite obvious and efficiently builds the loyalty of consumers to the brand. The official website directly refers to the Facebook page for games such as "find the G point"

- Keeping up with the news

Saint Valentine was one occasion for Spontex to publish a nice photo, in which the brand incited you to tag your friends...

... but more than that, Spontex also hijacks high-interest political facts, such as the current presidential election in France. 

This week, Nicolas Sarkozy, current French president, announced its candidacy to the 2012 Presidential election, with the slogan "La France forte" ("A strong France"), which Spontex diverted in to "La France frotte" (France is scrubing). A very nice pull, liked by nearly 700 people on the Spontex official page, and commented by nearly 40 users. 

However, to end with this analysis, Spontex's strategy has not always been the best, as shows the following video, broadcasted last year for Saint Valentine's day...