In mid 2005, Armani Jeans began its
search for an agency to design its new branding strategy for the
United States. It realized AddReal is the appropriate company
because it knows we have the capacity to create a focused
campaign to generate differentiation and position its brand to
where it needs to be. Overview The well-known brand is a luxury bridge line collection of denim-related clothing, although there are fifteen freestanding Armani Jeans stores in the world and items are sold in Emporio Armani Stores. This brand is mainly sold in department stores along with other different brands, where each of them has tough competition running in the background. Our client had concrete objectives for the branding strategy in the United States. The client knew that target customers and their dreams of power and success were starting to create connections in the digital world that could lead to a differentiation of the brand we’re buying at stores. Objectives The main objective was to understand the relationship of people in the target market with their behavior at a digital place, in order to realize which practices would be the most efficient to interact and get closer with their community. The next goal was to determine a targeted branding campaign that could engage loyal customers and leverage it, making them work for the reactive expansion of the brand via electronic media and consequently make a difference in the choice of users at department stores. Solution In order to support the launch of a celebrity brand strategy and meet the distinct requirements, the AddReal team started with a focused analytics campaign to determine how the target market was interacting in their digital everyday life, how people in that market were expressing themselves, and how they were differentiating from the crowd to connect with the same interests. Once the AddReal team had knowledge about how to approach the users in the most effective way, the team developed a branding strategy to interact with them via the different social media pages of the brand and other indirect channels. This is where we could engage with customers and initialize word-of-mouth reaction strategies. Since one of the main objectives was to build community with social networking aspects that do not exist on the original website, we focused heavily on the mood and functionality of that section in particular, using rich media creative and social media components. All of this needed to be presented with a creative look and feel that would evoke the power and passion characterizing the special connection between the brand and their owners. The next step was to create demand and inspirational motivation on the new released products leveraging differentiation by expanding knowledge with the products concepts and uniqueness. By this way, we would give the sense of exclusivity on those elements that could easily spread around the media, yet not easily afforded by everyone. Results - The results beat expectations. Knowledge about products spread out and posted "where to buy" links rose 485% in the first six months. - After the first three months after the campaign was released, overall department stores raised 46% and Armani Stores reported a 58% Increase sale on Armani jeans brand. - After 24 months of the release, social media referrals continued to increase; the marketers of the company have an effective channel and strategy that continues to be used. - As an indirect reaction, the official website traffic increased 72%.   |
