EVOKE by Anna

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introduction introduction Individual scents can stir emotions and recreate memories (Solomon & Rabolt, 2004). Evoke is a modern scent tailoring service that recreates scents derived from important memories through a fragrance profiling service that will capture the most valuable memories and translate them into the perfect fragrance for the consumer. Whether they want to create memories of home, childhood, travel, nature or love, Evoke is the brand that can do this for them. This modern brand attracts the younger consumer, aged 25-35, by offering an interactive and accessible service that embraces the consumer’s individual personality. The overall consumer is attracted to trustworthy brands they can become loyal to. Categorising the consumer as a yellow colour worker, a worker in the creative field, Evoke allows these consumers to be creative by being a co-creative brand. An article from Highsnob (Churchill, 2013), stated that ‘The fragrance industry is far too often consumed by its own obsession with branding, advertising, marketing and celebrity endorsements, leaving little time left to focus on the actual product itself: the scent. And yet the Internet is still relatively untouched by this business’.

Evoke is a brand that wants to reinvent the fragrance industry by embracing the digital age that the target consumer routinely uses within their everyday life but maintaining a clear emphasis on the scent. Consumers are the primary drivers of the directions brands take, and one obvious implication of this is how brands continue to make their brands distinct within the market. One successful example of how brands do this is through ‘exclusivity’ (Kendall, 2009), which Evoke will inherit and make coherent throughout the launch and promotion. This report will outline a proposed communication strategy to promote Evoke into the digital world as well as hosting a launch event that reflects the brands modern and creative essence.

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Evoke wants to create a long term impact rather than a short lived buzz by having a gradual build in regards to brand launch and consumer awareness as this compliments the brands personal and intimate feel. The location for the launch needs to reflect the modern style to enforce the brands aesthetics as well as a location that appeals to a younger consumer that would perhaps work in a larger city due to their creative careers. Inspired by the geometric shape and contemporary distinction it brings to the UK’s capital, The Shard, in figure 2, in central London is a perfect location to launch Evoke: modern architecture reflecting the modern age. Described as ‘a shard of glass through the heart of historic London’ (Bennett, 2011) reflects the way Evoke is breaking out of the traditional fragrance market and producing a new, modern fragrance tailoring service that captures a fragment of your memories through the digital platform. The luxurious but contemporary style that The Shard echoes will communicate to consumers the exclusivity of Evoke, but shows that Evoke appreciates artistic and visually enticing architecture, tapping into the yellow collar worker consumer interests. The geometric aesthetic echoes the brand identity that needs to be coherent throughout the brand launch, and the architecture and brand essence work hand-in-hand in communicating the future of the digital age.

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The launch will be featured on six floors, each floor reflecting the five different categories included within the scent profiling (Fig 3), finishing with the sixth floor. The sixth floor is where the guest will create their story, working hands on with our perfumer experts to recreate a memory from what they have smelt through their journey of the launch, giving them an opportunity to have an insight into how the brand works. Implementing the principles of the ‘Law of Authority’, where consumers are more likely to take interest into a product if they are listening to someone who is considered an expert (Cathy, 2012), our perfumery experts will be there to ensure they can provide relevant information as well as creating a successful scent that the guests will be able to take home and share, beginning to build their trust in Evoke.

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Fragrance is processed by the most primitive part of the brain, the limbic system, where the immediate emotions are experienced (Solomon & Rabolt, 2004). Therefore, our guests will need nothing but our scent notes to evoke their memories and create different emotions, rather than using colour or imagery. On each floor there will be a room that guests will enter which will have plain, white walls and nothing but alcoves within the walls, inspired by ‘The Art of Scent’ exhibition in New York, like in Fig 4. The exhibition aimed to recognise scent as a major medium of artistic creation, and the indentations in the wall were used to isolate the person smelling the scent from outside distractions as a diffuser element emits a puff of air when it sense someone is close (Kino, 2012) Hence, these alcoves will implement Evoke’s principles of wanting the guests to be inspired by only the scent. This artistic inspiration will also tap into the interests of the yellow collar worker of the target consumer and reflects the cocreative nature of the brand. The minimal and clean aesthetic will also reflect the modern style of Evoke, which will be coherent throughout the five floors of categories.

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Studies have shown that consumers base their judgments of a product partially on the type and loudness of sound playing in the background and that consumer’s need a ‘stimulus progression’ to create a positive mood (Solomon & Rabolt, 2004). When the guests beckon closer to the alcoves in the wall and the sensor is triggered, followed by the scent, there will be sounds played softly in the background reflecting the scent. This will enhance a positive attitude for product and will also emphasise the scent memory. For example, on the nature floor there will be scents such as oak and wet grass, synced with sounds of bird whistles and echoing wind. This theme will repeat throughout the floors but will change depending on the category. Each floor will have no more than seven scents to smell and choose from as studies show that decision making gets difficult when a consumer is given more than seven choices (Cohen, 2012).

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Online perfume brand. Subscribe to design your very own personal fragrance which reflects your memories. Online perfume brand. Subscribe to design your very own personal fragrance which reflects your memories.

All guests before arrival of the launch will have a registered account with Evoke that they can access at www.evokescent.co.uk or on their Evoke app on their smart phone. Next to each scent there will be a small QR (quick response) code (See Fig 10) that they can scan into the app (See Fig 11). This will give them more information about the scent, what other scents it mixes well with and they can also save the scent in their Evoke scent basket, which can be used when creating their own story on the sixth floor. This was inspired by the Bond No.9 digital fragrance, who uses a QR code within their advertising as the only way of purchasing the fragrance (Wong, 2013). It taps into the digital world and makes the consumer more interactive with the brand, making the launch feel personal to the guest communicating a trustworthy image. The strong emphasis of making the guests feel as though the launch is dedicated to their needs and likes taps into the narcissistic nature of the consumer, a successful trend within todays marketing, as the digital age has led to a narcissistic consumer (Wearing, 2012). Evoke will adopt the use of ‘participation’, previously used in the launch of P.Diddy’s ‘Unforgivable’ fragrance (Kendall, 2009), where consumers who have signed up to www.evokescent.co.uk but do not attend the launch can watch the whole launch from the site or app live. This allows a greater consumer reach and intrigue into the scents and the viewers are made to feel they are having an exclusive insight into an elite event.

Online perfume brand. Subscribe to design your very own personal

A brand that is based entirely online needs to invite people to the launch who have an association and appreciation for social media and the digital world as well as people that would attract the target consumer and their aspirational desires. Bloggers and vloggers YouTube embrace the digital world and consumers often trust their judgement when reviewing a product, as they are everyday people who are unlikely to be bias. Perfume bloggers such as Victoria for Bois de Jasmin, a blog that reviews perfumes, as well as fashion, graphic and photography bloggers. Bloggers have allowed the consumer to be more informed, savvy and in control. Therefor, media and marketing have to forge new and more equitable with their audiences (Smith, 2006). The personal and community driven brand that Evoke is, overcomes this challenge. Unknown models, like in fig 13 and 14, will be wearing minimalist, geometric clothing in the colours of the brand, grey, white and light blue teal, in a similar style to the brand COS, and walking around launch offering the guests their own scent strips and a card that also holds a QR code. When the guests scan this code they will be given more information about the launch and a chance to enter a sweepstake competition to win Evoke prizes.

Exciting events, such as contests and sweepstakes, encourage consumers to talk about Evoke and its products. This method is a cost effective way to strengthen the relationship with the consumer and extend the advertising reach. It allows consumers to be interactive in a way, creating a positive image of the brand (Grauschopf, 2013) The guests will also be encouraged to take photos on their smart phones and upload and share them to social media using hash tag #EvokeScent and #ShareYourScentStory, to promote Evoke’s social pages as well as the launch.

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Evoke will reinforce fragrance-marketing 3.0, which includes the three C’s: creative, communities and caring. The brand coincides with all three of these as evoke is creative in its approach, advertising and the cocreative nature of the brand. It will promote the sense of community by encouraging the consumer to share and comment on other people’s passions and experiences in relation to the scent they have created. It is also caring due to Evoke’s personal approach to the process of creating the consumers own scent (Beales, 2013). To reflect these principles, Evoke will enforce promotional techniques that are interactive and creative to appeal to the target market. To manage the spread of information between Evoke and the consumer and to gain greater exposure to the audience, Evoke will use PR agencies such as Felicities (Felicities, 2013). Specialising in PR and business management for fashion, music and creative brands, Felicities will encourage the creative style of Evoke and will successfully appeal to the target consumer.

Academics studying marketing and branding practices have identified the rise of the smart consumers as one challenge facing brands in the future (Keller, 2003). Increasing access to information through the Internet and the mass of marketing campaigns and advertisements, consumers are no longer passive observers of brands. Marketers and merchandisers need to find new ways to reach and be responsive to the intelligent consumer (Kendall, 2009). ‘Brand professionals will need to target these consumers by finding more personal ways to reach these consumers’ (Kendall, 2009). Evoke faces this challenge by offering a service that is personal in its approach and product. Evoke has taken inspiration from brands such as Graze and Glossybox, as both these companies use the concept of personalising and tailoring in an interactive and simple way. Due to the popularity of these two companies, the idea of being able to personalise products is something the modern day consumer desires and by making our brand interactive and personal we are tapping into the narcissistic side of the intelligent consumer.

Magazines provide detailed analysis of the readership of its audience and demographic information is available in addition to statistics on the size of the magazines circulation (Swanson & Everett, 2007). Therefor, by advertising Evoke in certain magazines it will reach the precise demographic and it will be a chance to promote the digital platform through print media. To appeal to the consumer, Evoke will advertise in magazines such as ‘20x20’, an art magazine based in London, ‘How’, a magazine for designers in the creative industry, and ‘I-D’ magazine, a magazine for fashion, music, art and culture.

The advert that will be used has been edited geometrically, inspired by the early 20th century art movement cubism and other photographers work such as Frederico Cabrera and Nathalie Hennis, to echo the brands identity and digital essence. The single and double-paged spreads (See Fig 14 and 15) create an aspect of intrigue into the brand and will appeal to the yellow collar worker. They feature both a male and a female model to make consumers aware that the product isn’t aimed at a specific sex. To highlight the digital platform within the advert there will be a QR code featured underneath the logo that the audience can scan on their smart phone. This will direct them to the site where they can find out about how the brand works and then subscribe to begin their scent story.

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As Evoke represents a brand that supports the idea of communities, Evoke will use word-of-mouth as a communication strategy. Word-ofmouth is product information transmitted by individuals to individuals. Consumers often feel that word-of-mouth tends to be more reliable and trustworthy than recommendations they get through more formal marketing channels (Solomon & Rabolt, 2004). ‘Share you scent story with a friend’, will be the promotional tool that Evoke will use to stimulate wordof-mouth marketing amongst the target market by encouraging consumers to share the scent, inspired by memories, with friends. They can also use the forum on the website (See Fig 16) to share their experience of Evoke, evolving wordof-mouth to a digital platform.

However, consumers need a motivation to encourage them to spread the word. Looking at Estee Lauder, who has invented successful marketing tools used throughout the beauty industry, adopted the ‘gift with purchase’ promotional device from the Charles of the Ritz brand of cosmetics. (Kendall, 2009). Considering this idea, Evoke will offer customers a free luxury candle, smelling of their own scent, when they share their scent story with friends and recommend them to subscribe to www.evokescent.co.uk. This will promote Evoke verbally, and create trust in the brand, as consumers put their trust in friend’s recommendations

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Brands often collaborate with other brands that share similar values and target similar consumers to give them greater leverage, much like the high-street store H&M teaming up with big labels like Versace. This collaboration was incredibly innovative and leveraged both brands, providing advantages for H&M and Versace. H&M gained huge sales from the projects, and Versace were able to reach a wider consumer base than they would have previously been able to (Scharf, 2012). Cos is a clothing brand selling timeless fashion with a modern and clean brand identity. Their aesthetic is minimal and they use grey, whites and light colours throughout their promotion, website and clothing, which is similar to Evoke’s (COS, 2013). To give Evoke greater leverage and to reach a greater consumer, Evoke and Cos will collaborate by featuring Evoke on Cos’s website within their ‘Things’ page (See Fig 19) as well as features in Cos online magazine. Evoke will use garments and accessories from Cos within advertising to give Cos leverage and higher sales. Consumers who have trust and loyalty in Cos as a brand, will associate Evoke with these feelings and begin to build the trust and loyalty with Evoke.

Marketers have embraced the Internet as being an integral part of their brands promotion due the consumer acceptance of the immense Internet (Kendall, 2009). The whole of creating your own scent process with Evoke is entirely developed online at www.evokescent.co.uk (See Fig 20). The website is accessible, easy to use and consumers can browse easily to learn more about the brand as well as subscribing to Evoke to create their scent. Fig 20 shows how the online site will present the process in an easy to understand way. evoke

digital The same service is available on Evoke’s smart phone app, making Evoke even more accessible and easy to use on the go. As Evoke is entirely a digital brand with minimal face-to-face interaction, it needs to deliver a high standard of social care to gain the customers trust and brand loyalty. Brand watch states that ‘47% of social media users engage in social care, meaning that customer service is imperative to brands, which fully supports the intentions of Evoke.

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Being an online service it is important that social media will be a crucial part of the promotion and advertising for Evoke. Evoke feels the most important social media sites to use would be Twitter, Instagram and Vine as these are current and target the consumer. Care must be taken to ensure consistency of such things as colour, sounds and print image clarity in electronic media (Kendall, 2009). The Evoke social media pages will articulate the brands strong identity with the use of the logo, strong colour palette and the geometric pattern (See Fig 21). The twitter page will provide updates in the brand and the consumers are able to tweet @EvokePerfume to ask questions or share their scent story. The instagram page will post images that will articulate Evoke’s essence, to communicate to consumers the brand identity. The vine page may demonstrate perfumers at work, interviews with Evoke’s perfumers and consumers sharing their scent story.

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As a pioneer in social commerce, Burberry was a crucial luxury brand to explore and research in order to discover how to successfully reach out to consumers digitally. Burberry’s Body perfume marketing technique, ‘Tryvertising’, meant consumers were able to try the perfume the perfume for free by requesting a sample through their Facebook page (Marsden, 2011). This pop-up ‘tryvertising’ fan-store method, launched on their social media page, featured a like-gate, a countdown timer, an attractive order form, and plenty of opportunities for users to share the news(See Fig 22). By getting Burberry Body into the hands of the consumer meant people were likely to recommend the brand. This method was interactive and digital as well as promoting a word of mouth buzz, known to enhance advertising effectiveness and drive launch sales.

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Although Evoke offers free samples of the different notes of a particular category after subscribing online, to promote Evoke through social media it will offer a ‘tryvertising’ opportunity through its twitter page. Consumers will be able to choose a perfume tester that has been created by an Evoke customer (See Fig 23). They will be able to read a different scent story from each category and order one that appeals to them and will be delivered to their address for free. For example, from the home category they will read Daisy’s scent story, who created a scent inspired by her family home with perfume built of scent notes of vanilla and fresh linen. This will encourage an online word of mouth buzz and enhance advertising effectiveness. To subscribe to Evoke online is free for the consumer, but throughout the year, from the initial launch, Evoke will develop a club members membership. The consumer will pay a fee of £10 to create an Evoke club membership account where they are offered exclusive gifts and discounts on creating their scent story. This appeals to the aspiring side to the consumer, as they will want to become part of this exclusive ‘club’.

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Embracing the digital age, Evoke is a brand that takes the tailored scent service onto a new platform, transforming the perfume industry. The target consumer seeks a brand that is personal to tap into their narcissist nature and to create distinction from other brands. They are the generation who incorporate the Internet into their everyday lives and seek a service that allows them to be creative and interactive. Evoke is a service that is co-creative, accessible online and responds to the customers personal needs and likes. The launch reflects all these elements, communicating to the consumer that this is the brand for them. With a merging of platforms used in the launch, the guests are interactive by smelling the scents, creating their own and are then encouraged to share their experience on social media. Incorporating methods used successfully by other brands, Evoke has created a launch that will a buzz but will also have a create long-term impact through the PR and digital advertising, communicating to the consumer that Evoke is an online tailored scent service, which captures a fragment of their memories. F i g

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Fig 1. AUTHORS IMAGE,

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Fig 2. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. The Shard [Photograph]

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Fig 4. 2013. The Art of Scent exhibition [Digitall photograph]

2013. 3D Generated bottle design [Image].

AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Scent samples [Photograph]

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Fig 5. 2013. Love Category [Digital Photograph] http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2012/05/04/9475839/Twist%20Engagement%20 Ring%20Princess%20Cut%20-%20PC105.jpg

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Fig 6. 2013. Nature Category [Digital Photograph] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/57/Canadian_maple_leaf_2. jpg Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 7. 2013. Childhood Category [Digital Photograph] http://littletatertots.com/childcare/wpcontent/uploads/2013/01/blocks.jpg Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 8. 2013. Home Category [Digital Photograph] http://www.addicted2decorating.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/04/home.png Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 9. 2013. Travel Category [Digital Photograph] http://www.arowanaconsulting.com/News1/images/compass.jpg

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Fig 10. 2013. QR Code [Digital Image] http://clikbrix.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/james_goodhouse_profi le_qrcode.png Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 11. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke App [Image]

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Fig 12. 2013. Female model Image [Digital Photograph] http://stylesiren.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cos-store-bt2fashion2.jpg Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 13, 2013. Male model image [Digital Photograph] http://demicouture.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/cos-ss101.jpg Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 14, AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke Double-page spread [Photograph]

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Fig 15. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke Single-page spread [Photograph]

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Fig 16. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke Website [Image]

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Fig 17. 2013. Cos Fashion [Digital photograph] http://www.cosstores.com/Fashion/Looks Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 18. 2013. Cos Logo [Digital Image] http://www.cosstores.com Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 19. 2013. Cos ‘Things Page’ [Digital Image] http://www.cosstores.com/Things Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 20. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke Online process [Image]

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Fig 21. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke social media pages [Image]

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Fig 22. 2013. Burberry Tryvertising [Digital Image] http://socialcommercetoday.com/smells-like-f-commerce-burberrybody-launches-with-pop-up-facebook-tryvertising-store-images/ Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 23. 2013. Perfume samples [Digital Photograph] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/acVtokr7jKo/UGnFSFvbCSI/AAAAAAAAJR4/F6UZkrrFtA4/s1600/samples.jpg Accessed: 4th June 2013

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Fig 24. AUTHORS IMAGE, 2013. Evoke Photoshoot [Photograph]

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