TNG Blog

We all strive to reach success. We plan, we organize, we execute…all in order to get there – to the peak of the curve. It’s a nice view from there – say those who reached the peak. They also say – it’s hard to stay there once you’ve reached it, since the winds are strong.

We hear a lot about people, products, companies who made it. Their success stories are used as case studies and lessons for others. The steps that they took are analyzed, praised and copied. While most of us could remember at least a few success stories that we have heard about, how many of us can recall what happened to the subjects of those stories after success? A day after success? A year after success?

In a couple of my previous posts, I wrote about the wunder-campaign of our time. In 2010 I joined the army of marketers and bloggers who meticulously followed a living legend – the Old Spice marketing-viral-social-etc-etc-campaign. W+K got us all hooked up with Isaiah’s perfectly chiseled body and witty monologues. Millions of people bowed down to creativeness and a new approach to marketing that Old Spice dared to implement in its marketing campaign. A direct response to customers, wow – yes, future marketing students will have the Old Spice name materialize throughout their textbooks.

The Old Spice buzz lasted quite a bit… resulting in increased brand sales and a crowd of groupies who obsessively engaged and responded to the campaign. W+K brought the Old Spice guy to the top of the peak, but what was the plan from there on?

Source: W+K Old Spice Case Study, 2010

In perfect product or brand life-cycle management, by the time a sales peak is reached, there should already have been a plan developed for innovations that might restart the cycle (I hope that Old Spice  planned something to prevent Isaiah from rolling downhill). The same rules could be applied to a marketing campaign, which also has a similar cycle, one during which marketing activities  become noticeable enough to gain customers’ attention and a positive reaction, resulting in increasing sales. However, if not ‘restarted’ at the right time, that same marketing campaign becomes worn out. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict what happens to the brand.

So, going back to our wunder-campaign “The man your man could smell like”…what happened almost exactly a year after the big success? Since Isaiah was such a hit, inertia dictated that rather than developing an innovation to restart the brand life-cycle, Old Spice would try to revive the man that everyone wants to smell like. The revival process was called Mano a Mano in el Baño. The most publicized ever internet duel was supposed to put Old Spice back on the peak. Brilliant!  The comeback of nice-smelling American hero Isaiah was supposed to be safeguarded by cheesy, metro-sexual Italian sidekick Fabio, a guy who had the campaign-duel taken place in Europe might  have even had some chance of winning….but, not in a land dominated by tough, primarily un-metro-sexual,  NFL-loving men.

The buzz has been created, people have spoken, and the American hero has won, but people talking about a campaign vs. buying a product are two completely different scenarios. It will take some time for both us and Old Spice to determine whether or not the revival succeeds. If it did, kudos! He lives! Or does he? Perhaps Old Spice never truly wanted to revive, but simply milk the ‘man who smells like he can bake you a cake’ for all that he is worth. And he is worth a lot….especially shirtless.

Last year, I wrote a case study about wasted advertising money in the corporate world. This month, to no surprise, I have once again come across a similar situation. Call me a typical woman, but at least a few times a year I have to buy Vogue, as opposed to just flipping through it at one of the bookstores. So this month, I was perusing through the pages of the December issue of the iconic Vogue, described by book critic Caroline Weber in The New York Times in December 2006 as “the world’s most influential fashion magazine.” Weber points that the magazine I was reading had “long functioned as a bible for anyone worshiping at the altar of luxury, celebrity and style.” Yet she is not alone, as many others have pointed to its fame for images of high fashion and high society. And as I continue to skim the pages, as any good marketer, I find myself wondering about the magazine’s brand identity and the marketing activities of various fashion and lifestyle brands that advertise in this premier publication.

Let’s look at this from a few sides.

First, from the lens of Vogue, which – as mentioned above – has long held the reputation of luxury, high society, and high fashion. If one has enough nerves to flip through to page 246, where an uninterrupted 67 pages of content actually reside, one could see an 8-page spread on Tom Ford, 8- and 10-page layouts of the latest high fashion trends, 6 pages of cover girl Angelina Jolie, and a random assortment of additional stories on modern art, landscaping, and…Spider Man, the Rock Musical. Now if we move beyond the fact that less than 40% of the magazine’s 330-pages are actually devoted to content – other than advertisements and random empty pages like the Table of Contents – one can clearly see that the magazine still holds on to some glimpse of being the “world’s most influential fashion magazine.”

When one accounts for the fact that more than 90% of the magazine’s advertisements focus on some realm of fashion, style, and beauty (see chart below), one might even venture that, through the collective influence of moderate content and a barrage of advertisements, the magazine remains truly dedicated to fashion and style. But that is not my concern. Rather, I question whether Vogue remains true to its reputation as a beacon for “high fashion and high society.”

Part of the issue arises from the fact that, since taking over in 1988, current editor Anna Wintour has aimed to create a Vogue that is focused on new and more affordable ideas of fashion for a wider audience, in order to maintain circulation of the magazine. But something still does not feel right. You flip through the 120+ pages of content discussed above and you see a Balenciaga bikini for over $1k, a leather iPad case for $4k, and $200 Gucci sandals for the little one. As you continue through the content, all you see are high end items. There is nothing that is affordable for the masses. So, Vogue is still holding true to its reputation.

Or is it?

I begin to see a disparity in the brand – the content is truly a “bible for anyone worshiping at the altar of luxury, celebrity and style” yet the advertisements are a mishmash of sponsors that would pay. Are the same women praying for a Louis Vuitton life by the coast (p.8), a Chanel dress (p.22), and a diamond enriched Omega watch (p.26), the same ones that worship Gap (p.48-59), Target (p.82), and JC Penney (p.207), and drive a Chevrolet (p.136)? I think not. In fact, there is so much disparity that it does not make sense. After performing an in-depth analysis of the issue, I find that only about one-third (see chart below) of the advertising pages are dedicated to what I consider to be true luxury brands (e.g., Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Rolex, etc).

So, Vogue is aiming to broaden its user base by soliciting advertisements from a variety of brands, yet the content that they provide truly focuses almost exclusively on the high end fashion and lifestyle domain. The reader, or the customer, ultimately ends up flipping through 200 pages of advertisements, perhaps reads an article or two, and maybe gets some ideas about fashion but might not be able to afford it. And then there are the brands that advertise in Vogue hoping to reach their target market.

Some of these companies should ask themselves several strategic questions:

• Are they reaching their target market?
• Is this an effective approach to reaching their target market?
• Are there better alternatives for marketing spend?

It is difficult to fully estimate the value of these advertisements, but I would certainly suggest that there are probably several companies whose marketing budget might be better spent elsewhere…Chevrolet and Gap included.

Idiot’s Advice for Small Business Owners: Small business owners and entrepreneurs that don’t have the luxury of wasting resources or time on a variety of marketing vehicles must choose wisely. Make sure that you thoroughly study your options and select those channels or vehicles within a channel that will most effectively allow you to reach and influence your target audience.