Just call Amazon, Goliath. Dan Wallace-Brewster, vice president of corporate marketing at OneStop Internet — a retail e-commerce solutions provider — spoke with Adam Kronengold and Alexandra Taylor, senior director of digital marketing and senior marketing director at Authentic Brands Group, respectively, on reviving a waning brand and the strategy for beating Amazon to the punch.
Traditional channels of commerce are in a tailspin. “Devices are challenging us to talk to the customer in a consistent way at every moment instead of a 30-second spot during a targeted TV show,” Wallace-Brewster said. “Customers have higher expectations of all brands, it’s no longer the competitor down the street. It’s Uber and Netflix that are changing the expectations for all categories of commerce.”
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Some stores are still slow making the transition. “Brand marketing is still important, it’s not going to get you through the day. You need to build product and quality in that product and service to retain today’s customer…because brand names aren’t going to get you there,” Wallace-Brewster said.
In today’s market, innovation equals success. “A start-up with help of a brand influencer can reach a huge market….Now it’s easy for start-ups to compete with big stores,” he said. “This creates a dynamic marketplace, but makes it more challenging for incumbents to maintain market share.”
As for Amazon, Wallace-Brewster suggested learning from the behemoth instead of running from it. How? “Innovate faster and take advantage of the brand loyalty that you’ve built,” Wallace-Brewster said.
Wallace-Brewster suggested employing agility, buoyancy and congruency to maximize data, change market demand and commit to customer centricity. ABG’s Juicy Couture was offered up as a good case study. Juicy Couture, a brand known for socialites sporting pink, bedazzled versions of its tracksuit, is making a comeback. ABG’s Taylor spearheaded the initiative by taking a hard look at social opportunities.
For the campaign Taylor turned to nostalgia, a popular subject among Millennials. “The objective and also our biggest challenge was to reconnect with our core customer, engage that Millennial audience, and to make Juicy Couture relevant again,” Taylor said. To do so, Taylor guided Juicy Couture to revisit its most identifiable product for its #TrackIsBack campaign.
Juicy Couture featured 21 influencers like model Ruby Aldridge and socialite/DJ Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor in a video recalling favorite memories of their first tracksuit. “We wanted to highlight the idea of stripping back overt glamour in previous Juicy campaigns and focus on the customer. We featured relatable, diverse women to stand as our global girl-squad to align with the customer,” de Cadenet Taylor said.
The campaign saw tremendous success in two months, garnering more than one billion impressions primarily attributed to customer engagement in all social channels.
“[We’re] engaging across all platforms and making it cohesive from e-commerce to social media to in-store,” she said. Bolstering its place in the U.S. market, the brand collaborated with Bloomingdales to release an exclusive version of the tracksuit to instill messaging in physical stores.
The main takeaway: discover organic themes to deliver integrated messaging in all mediums to support the consumer’s journey.