A NEW VOICE FOR ECHO
Byline: Marc Karimzadeh
NEW YORK — There’s a new Echo this spring.
After 14 years of no print advertising, the Echo Design Group is returning with a new campaign and tag line for its Echo label.
Known for using “The Echo of an Interesting Woman” in its ads from 1977 to 1987, the new campaign’s concept is “Everything Has an Echo.” For the first of the new ads, which will appear in consumer books this month, the tag line is “Summer has an Echo.”
“We had a lot of equity that had lingered from the last campaign,” said Lynn Roberts, Echo’s vice president of advertising. “People knew the campaign and we wanted to build on that and expand the awareness of the brand and its extensive array of products.”
Roberts said the company stopped investing in advertising in 1987 mainly because it shifted its focus to expanding product classifications. In the past few years, the 77-year-old company has evolved beyond its roots as only a print scarf maker into a multiproduct firm, with an offering that includes scarves, wraps, cold-weather accessories, umbrellas, gloves, rainwear and men’s neckwear, along with home accessories such as bed linens, decorative fabrics, wallpaper and paper goods.
The new campaign aims to bring this diversity, each featuring the company’s signature expertise in prints, to the consumer.
“[The ad] is showcasing multiple categories and tying them together with an emotional resonance,” Roberts said.
Created by the Glover Group, whose other clients have included Sulka and Anne Klein, the campaign was shot by photographer Perry Ogden on Cumberland Island, Ga., and Amelia Island, Fla. The four-page insert ad features a variety of images, both with and without models, and some atmospheric landscape photography without any product.
In one shot, the model sits on a wooden boardwalk with a graphic silk scarf tied around her head. In another, she is wearing a floral scarf around her shoulder, sitting in front of a floral curtain and surrounded by floral and striped cushions.
“We were trying to create a brand identity for this company,” said Jill Glover, president and executive creative director of the Glover Group. Glover added that her firm was trying to capture the essence of the brand — print-work — through painterly imagery.
“Most accessories campaigns are not really lifestyle campaigns,” she said. “This is a lifestyle brand, with fashion and home, which is an unusual concept.”
Of the campaign’s concept, “Everything has an Echo,” Glover said: “[It is] very expressive. Accessories are a form of individual expression. They are about the many moods you might have.”
The four-page insert ad is going to break in the March issues of Harper’s Bazaar and House Beautiful, and in April’s Marie Claire.
