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The Most Eloquent Silence Is a Kiss

Some smaller brands, lost in the shadow of larger store closings and headline Chapter 11 bankruptcy re-organizations, are suffering too. The latest casualty of a weakened economy, a lack of brand and product differentiation, and much time, money, and effort wasted chasing too wide a demographic swathe, is the Ruehl chain of stores owned by Abercrombie and Fitch.

According to A&F, the Ruehl brand was created to reflect “the aspirational Greenwich Village lifestyle.” Product names sought to invoke the trendy sophistication of those eras, with names like “Chance Encounter” and “One Night Stand.” And while those designators might have actually been evocative choices in the 1950’s or even the late 60’s/early 70’s, they didn’t quite resonate with 21st century consumers. Particularly with pocketbooks selling for $300 and leather flip-flops that went for $50.

The company reported that Ruehl's same-store sales in May slumped 33%. A&F as a whole hasn't shown sales growth since April 2008, and in the face of the current economy it is increasingly shedding its “no-markdown” mantra. One wonders how they managed to miss all those “50% Off” and “Buy One, Get One” posters in their competitors’ store windows. Brand and retail observers have pondered why it took the company so long say anything about the extreme lack of profits and the poor performance of the Ruehl brand.

The lesson to be learned: if you can’t meaningfully differentiate your brand and product offerings, you shouldn’t be surprised when both consumers and investors give you the kiss-off.



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Be Prepared for the Unexpected

TV stations and the FCC spent more than two years getting ready for the battle to advise and prepare the public for the transformation from analog to digital television. They didn’t need to predict anything. They knew the date it was happening, they told people (a lot) and that, as they say, was that. But come the day, nearly 3 million consumers weren’t prepared for the changeover. That must have been a crushing blow to the TV stations and FCC. What happened to their marketing and media plan?

Another crushing realization is that most of the time marketers don’t have nearly that kind of time to plan for changing consumers in changing marketplaces. The fact is that technology will continue to change, and changes in viewer behavior will also change – just at an accelerated and unprecedented rate – won’t help matters. All this is bound to bring about a revolutionary transformation to the marketing paradigm, and if you don’t have predictive measures in place you’re going to eventually get crushed!

So as a public service to help prepare brands for these coming encounters, Brand Keys and The Wall Street Journal Office Network will be presenting the results of a Blackberry-based study that accurately predicted brand values, engagement, and sales for cross-media planning (looking at events, digital, and TV) 6 months ahead of the market. Oh, and the predictive metrics correlate very highly with actual, in-market purchases of the Blackberry brand.

You can see it live at The Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement 4.0 conference tomorrow June 24th at the Millennium Hotel in New York City. Or if you are unable to attend, please drop to note to Brand Keys execs Leigh Benatar (leighb@brandkeys.com) or Amy Shea (amys@brandkeys.com), and they’ll arrange to get you a copy of the presentation to you.

Having predictive media assessments in your brand’s marketing toolbox can help reinforce your marketing and media plans, so things don’t come crashing down around your brand. If you are thus prepared, media resources can be allocated more effectively and marketing forays executed more efficiently.

Prepare like that and you can predict that both brand and balance sheet will be very healthy in the future. Because using analog measures to understand today’s digital consumer is oh-so-two-years ago.



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Climbing to Higher (Brand) Peaks

Ernest Hemingway who noted that one of the only three, true sports was mountaineering (aside from bullfighting and motor racing he thought “all the rest are merely games”), would have been saddened to hear that Eddie Bauer, the iconic outdoor-clothing chain that sold goose-down coats to Mount Everest mountaineers and modern outdoor clothing to ski-schussing college students, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. Eddie Bauer is the latest apparel retailer to file for bankruptcy, along with perhaps less-iconic brands like Mervyn’s, Steve & Barry’s, and Goody’s.

Eddie Bauer has been struggling to repay its debt. And the fact that consumers slowed down spending on anything but necessities can’t have helped. In fact, the falloff came as Eddie Bauer was attempting to pull off what would have been a multi-year turnaround. “Eddie Bauer is a good company with a great brand and a bad balance sheet,” said Neil Fiske, the company’s CEO, though the retailer also said stores, catalog business and Web sites would continue operating, and that they will honor all customer gift cards, returns, and their points program.

According to our 2009 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, Eddie Bauer was just edged out of 1st place by J. Crew, another iconic clothing brand, whose ascension was largely aided and abetted by the patronage of Michele Obama, with L.L. Bean a distant #3.

On the marketing side of things, Eddie Bauer recently celebrated a new line called “First Ascent,” outfitting two mountaineers as they took on a climb of Mount Everest. On the financial side of things, there are plans in place to sell the company for $202 million to CCMP Capital Advisors.

A judge still needs to approve the sale, and other potential bidders still could emerge. But based on engagement and customer loyalty levels, whoever ends up buying the brand is pretty sure to end up on top of the world.



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Any Man Can Be A Father, But It Takes A Special Person To Be A Dad.

Father’s Day is next Sunday. It started in 1909 in Spokane, WA. By a daughter who heard a Mother's Day sermon, and thought of the idea for a Father's Day. A 1956 Joint Resolution of Congress first recognized the holiday, and in 1972, President Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father's Day – the third Sunday of June.

That special day turned into what’s expected to be a $9+ billion dollar retail holiday. This year’s Brand Keys survey found about the same number of consumers (72%) will be celebrating the holiday this year, and those that are will be spending an average of $110.00 to recognize Dad. Where will all that money be going? Consumers reported the following:

Gift cards 35%
Clothing 28%
Tools 11%
Electronics 8%
Wine/Alcohol 8%
DVDs 7%
Phones 2%

The biggest change from last year is that more consumers report they will be buying more gift cards (up +5%), a trend we identified a number of years ago. But ties and tools are still de rigueur.

So, as you plan your own special gift list for this Sunday you might well remember the Ogden Nash couplet, “The greatest gift I ever had came from Heaven; I call him Dad!”



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Defying Gravity

When it comes to photographic portraiture, few do it better than Annie Leibovitz, chronicler of many a star and legend. One of Ms. Leibovitz’s latest efforts is a slick campaign for Louis Vuitton featuring famous travelers, none whom have travelled further than those in the latest ad. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, a new Vuitton ad is featuring astronauts Buzz Aldrin; Jim Lovell, Apollo 13’s commander; and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, all gazing up at the full moon, smiling, and wearing very, very nice clothes.

It is, as Leibovitz’s photos always are, stunning in its composition, and the travel metaphor is a perfect one for the LV bag that sits next to Ms. Ride, with what appears to be maps emerging from its opening. Yet, while little may have changed on the moon in the last forty years, the retail landscape on planet earth has shifted in ways that would have amazed us back when we watched in stunned silence as humans first took a leap for all mankind.

As the epitome of a luxury brand, Louis Vuitton has had its share of change to deal with, not the least of which is the reduced need for luggage for a citizenry choosing stay-cations over vacations as the economic news continues to assault. Yet, blaming the economy is an easy out for brands that have been under increasing scrutiny by consumers asking why when looking at price tags for handbags that approach what a car did back when we first kicked up some moon dust.

Brands have always been about meaning, and our continuing research of the fashion category demonstrates increased importance of brands when it comes to how consumers choose what to wear. As purchases are weighed more carefully, consumers are using brands more than ever as a way to organize information on products and services. And it’s the smart brands that will respond with a deep understanding of what drives loyalty and engagement among an ever-more savvy buying public.

After all, if we could land a man on the moon, brands can surely respond with relevant meaning, and not just memories—no matter how much gravity we have here on earth.



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Going Out Through the In Door

Banks are putting on the full-court press to change their image, and what better way than to use advertising—right? After all, consumers, no longer able to afford those visits to restaurants and theaters, are now home watching television and snacking on generic microwave popcorn, their unopened 401k statements sitting on the kitchen counter.

Banks are changing their names. AIG is now AIU, and the Bank of America has eliminated the Countrywide moniker, finding the mortgage lender brought more than a little baggage to the table. Anne Finucane, the chief marketing officer at Bank of America, is quoted in the New York Times as saying “We are an optimistic society. Individuals and companies want to move ahead. They want to get on with their lives. They want the banking industry to help them.”

As researchers following the banking industry for many years from a customer point-of-view, we feel more than safe in saying that consumers are looking for a little more than “getting on with their lives.” Most want to get back their lives, especially the ones they had in mind before their retirement plan turned into a case study. Our data show that expectations run high when it comes to drivers of loyalty like trust and acumen, and banks are falling miserably short of the consumers’ ideal—many because the brands fail to understand, at a granular level, what trust really means.

Consumers want, and frankly deserve, more than Bank of America’s latest advertising effort visualizing America’s optimism through the metaphor of opening doors. No matter what we keep moving forward—that is the message and it’s the only message, as if somehow we all woke up one morning to find ourselves in a mess that no one can quite understand but that we will fix with our collective spunk. It’s hard not to be put off by use of the royal “we” in this case, much less the slick imagery that leads one to question if any bail-out money was harmed in this production.
If banking brands have any hope of winning back customer trust, they will have to start with more than tired propaganda and platitudes. They will have to understand and respond to the attributes, benefits and values that consumers want in a bank—or the only doors that will be opened will be opening out.



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