Brand Strategy Guest Lecture

How do Consumers consume and connect with brands?
-Advertsing strategies
-Understanding their demographic
-Understading emerging demographic
-Keeping and increasing footfaal
-Understanding, changing and emerging trends in consumption
E.g Diversity, Ethics, Social responsbility

Physical and digital branding advertsing strategies
-John Lewis- physical brand
-Fast Fashion online retailers, digital advertising resource via online, digital bill boarding, taxis and so on
-Word of mouth e.g Patagonia and People Tree
-There are also brands that historically have no advertised heavily e.g Body Shop

Visual Communication
-Visual messages come to us in seconds
-The demographics now link with
-What draws  consumer in and why?
-What are the connectors?
-Connection to visual information
e.g House of Fraser 2015 Ad, BooHoo,com (cross sectional ad's), People Tree, Patagonia
-How can the brand position themselves or position themselves differently?

More Abstract methods of Advertsing
-Celebrity (Rihanna for River Island, through fast fashion it was a way to get people to buy into fast fashion.)
-Guerrilla (Into the public, graffiti, pop-up stores, fresher approach to advertising)
-YouTube Campaigns
-Subliminal Advertising (Banned a long time ago, wasn't ethical)


How branding and marketing drive the fashion industry
-Connects directly to the consumer
-Drives Price, aspirational
-Drives and captures specific demographics (whilst trying to pick up new consumers)
-Marketing incentives drives consumer e.g. vouchers, buy one get one free, driving price down for a limited period of tie, countdowns on social media until offfer on product purchase expires
-Pushes consumption by selling product through a specific window of time
-Historically brand identity was king
-Brand attachment locked the consumer in via aspiration
-This is changing now with generational shifts- consumers no longer consume because a brand tells them who to be

Meeting the consumer needs
-Needs to understand
-Who they are
-How to reach them
-Where they live, north south divide in consumer taste- Where to appropriate your brand, where it will sell the most
-Their age
-What they are prepared to pay
-Their likes and dislikes
-Their expectations
-If the production is desirable
-Brands need to research and gather data on their consumers to understand them

Research
-Primary and Seconday

Primary
-Questionnaires
-Surveys
-E-Mails
-Telephone Calls
-Focus Groups
-Photography
Set up a Social Media forum so that you can all keep in touch through Christmas Holidays

Secondary
-Mintel Reports
-Reliable sources


Effective Research Strategies
-Organising hard copy info in files and highlighting info you have taken as reasearch
-Photo of a Book, Magazine, journal covers
-Digital Information; Organising files on a USB with titles e.g ethics

Examining Demographics
-Age, Geographic Location, Sub-Cultures (Who is wearing what and why), Earning/spending

Swot Analysis
-Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Pest Analysis (
-Politcal (Sustainability)
-Economics (No disposable income)
-Social (No identification)
-Technological (Bricks and Mortar struggling with Online retailers)

Micro Analysis of Marketing Strategies
-Demographics
-Economics
-Social and Cultural
-Political
-Technological

4 P's in relation to marketing strategy (Macro Analysis)
-Products
-Price
-Place
-Promotion
-Is the brand attaching to these aspects?

Brand Mapping
-Assessment of consumer perceptions of brand positioning using diagrams

Investigating Brands
-Auditing Brand; Investigating their current position in the market place (Available at Companies House)

What can Struggling brands improve on?
-Connecting with the customer
-Advertising strategies
-Their Reputation
-How they connect to the consumer (Rethink their ethos, how they appear to the consumer)
-Their History; sitting back on past glories and still expect consumers to consume because of how they perceives them to be in the past
-Brand Currency; Brands developing a better understanding of generational/ cultural shifts and how society is changing.

Do Brands need to do their research?
 -The director being reluctant to change their ethos, being inflexable in the way that they promote their brand, ignorance to the consumer

Writing Report
-Look at where they were, where they are now and where (Via your own in-depth research and 'proving' your position)

What can brands improve on?
-Reflect on research Strategies in your 'brand' groups discuss effective methods of attaching solid research strategies to your brand outcomes.