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Not a Good Ad Cam paign: Tiffany’s Reposi- tioning Stumbles
Not a Good Ad Campaign: Tiffany’s Repositioning Stumbles
LVMH President announces buyout of Tiffany’s
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Emily Xiao A walk into a Tiffany & Co. flagship store is a walk into tradition. Walls are lined with an iconic mainstay tint of Tiffany blue as shoppers search for sterling silver jewelry, diamond rings, or the iconic heart tag bracelet. Gift givers and self-buyers alike, longtime customers are typically affluent working adults or older. Ask any luxury connoisseur — Tiffany’s is a storied brand built on heritage. Founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany, the brand gained notoriety in the 20th century with the creative direction of his son, Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1961, the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Audrey Hepburn brought the brand international acclaim, and in 1998, Tiffany’s trademarked its iconic blue color for its jewelry boxes. However, in 2021, shoppers care about more than history. Now, the advent of digital marketing, growing younger shopper segments, and the pervasiveness of influencer, celebrity, and social media culture in retail markets have pushed Tiffany’s to change management practices and reposition its brand. In January, luxury giant LVMH acquired Tiffany’s for $15.8 billion (discounted from an original ask price of $16.2 billion due to pandemic-related losses). LVMH subsequently appointed Anthony Ledru as the brand’s new CEO. Beyond these organizational changes, Tiffany’s has issued a slew of new marketing campaigns targeting a younger demographic.
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In real time, Tiffany’s is experimenting with its brand to maintain relevance. One of its new successful campaigns features Beyoncé and Jay-Z, thus pandering to celebrity culture. “Ushering in a new brand identity, this campaign embodies the beauty of love through time and all its diverse facts, forging a new vision of love today,” according to a company statement. Here, the jeweler has smartly reinvigorated itself by employing some of entertainment and music’s biggest names while staying true to its history by retaining the traditional love story, albeit through a modern lens. Other creative moves have been more controversial. Earlier this year, Tiffany’s released videos of young, edgy models with intentionally unstyled hair, with the bolded tagline Not your mother’s Tiffany. Plastered around LA and NY, Not your mother’s Tiffany aimed to encapsulate Gen Z’s youth, edginess, and rebelliousness. The campaign is a retread of GM’s 1988 campaign: “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Known as a notorious flop, GM’s campaign is more widely taught as a cautionary tale than an innovative marketing strategy. For Tiffany’s to emulate GM was an interesting creative choice in and of itself: according to mixed reception and backlash, both Tiffany’s traditional base and younger consumers were unimpressed by the initiative to ditch their brand. As Tiffany’s finds itself mired with criticism, the brand needs to increase its audience awareness and focus its innovation in a clearer direction while upholding its tried and true brand. In traditional luxury buying, customers can be segmented into either “big jewelry purchasers” or “modern self-purchase” categories. The first group tends to be an older clientele raised on Tiffany’s traditions, while the latter is a trendier, younger audience. Even marketing itself is traditionally guarded. Luxury marketing is a high end, homogeneous process, where strategists are typically white and European. In all, luxury is an exclusive market that is highly codified in both process and audience. The growth of Gen Z, however, is altering the luxury marketing landscape. With a growing younger customer base and increasingly democratic access to information via the web, marketing is becoming more customer-centric; highly-regarded marketers hold less and less influence. Millennials and Gen Z will contribute to 130% of the luxury market’s growth between now and 2025, according to an estimate from Bain and Company. For Tiffany’s, understanding the desires of younger consumers is essential to capturing a share of this growth. rect company interface or involvement. Marketers need to adapt to the equal access, democratic forms of brand discussion and reviews. For Tiffany’s, this means listening to consumer wants is vital; no longer can marketers recycle old advertising headlines. Understanding what young buyers want is the next step for Tiffany’s. Gen Z values perceived usefulness, humor, and fun in promotional marketing. On TikTok, for instance, brands play into Gen Z’s humor and wit by being active in viral video comment sections and by taking on casual internet colloquialisms. Gen Z also values relatability, diversity, and ethics more than other demographics. Fashion brands foten leverage influencer and celebrity partnerships to cater directly to this audience. Even the most exclusive conglomerates pick models who are more representative of a diverse American population. If they don’t, consumers will run to the internet and social media, voicing their discontent and generating brand-disrupting noise until they do. In the luxury space, there is a clear distinction between what’s worked for traditional brand loyalists and affluent older buyers and what younger segments look towards. For the self-motivated, up and coming buyers, brand values are important. Brands need to show these values through convincing narratives and continual commitment rather than telling consumers what they’re getting. For marketers, there is a huge demand for diversity. With the web as a social networking platform, the transfer in power from sellers to consumers is disrupting traditional marketing processes. Overall, luxury brands like Tiffany’s need to accept the future of a customer-first reality. Tiffany’s is seeing large manage-
With a growing younger custom er base and increas“ -
These consumers are tech savvy and bound with internet spend. Online, they engage in informal activities, with a great set of choices and tools to influence their spending decisions. They tend to trust information from the internet and social networks, and they like to share their views on brands without a di-
Leading a new direction
ment changes with the oversight of LVMH. Along with new CEO Ledru, Tiffany & Co. recently named Andrea Davey their first new CMO in five years. An even deeper demonstration of Tiffany’s commitment to refreshing the brand is their creative team changes. Although once highly exclusive, Tiffany’s is now opening its creative teams to students from underprivileged backgrounds. Executive creative director Ruba Abu-Nimah unveiled this initiative at the Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography. The use of young creative talent is uncommon in high-end jewelry, where creative processes value corporate structure and skills in a traditionally white, European space. Overall, introducing young creatives is a step in the right direction towards improving diversity and innovation. In a digital world, however, consumers will act with or without company approval. To really succeed, Tiffany’s needs to not only put aside their siloed processes but also actively listen to consumer feedback.
Cheapening or deepening the brand?
If Tiffany’s is seeking customer feedback, they should look first to their Not your mother’s Tiffany campaign. Traditional brand loyalists have dissed the ads, with Rachel ten Brink, an entrepreneur and named as part of Entrepreneur Magazines’ 100 Powerful Women of 2020, writing that “Awareness doesn’t equal relevance” in response to the ad campaign. Even to outsiders, Tiffany’s seems to be dismissing longtime customers. Moms said they felt unneeded as customers; older Tiffany clients expressed their disgust at being so explicitly rejected. Young observers saw through the campaign as an attempt to pander to them and even recognized it as a clear attempt at segmenting demand. A deeper look at the content of the campaign itself: Tiffany’s is telling rather than showing consumers they’ve changed. Not your mother’s Tiffany becomes a cop-out, an overdone phrase that comes across as arrogant instead of warm. Tiffany’s has shown a lack of self-awareness in seeking to advertise to younger customers without directly involving them or catering to their values. Tiffany’s needs to take a truly bold stand by adapting, not abandoning tradition. In Tiffany’s lazy attempt to go from vintage to youth-friendly, they are caught between the past and present, alienating both older and younger segments.
Tiffany’s, tradition, and the future
Not your mother’s Tiffany was just a slice of Tiffany’s new direction (or lack thereof). There have been tangible losses of Tiffany tradition as well. Artist Stuart Semple is now selling the once trademarked Tiffany blue directly to consumers. Tiffany & Co. itself has rebranded stores with yellow, ditching their own trademark. Challenging the commercialism of a once-coveted color shows how customer-centric and democratized retail has become. Most recently, Tiffany’s has unveiled a collaboration with skateboarding lifestyle brand Supreme that observers have called “desperate” and “cheap,” a poor fit with the brand’s high-class position. While Tiffany’s is right in knowing that it can’t rely on tradition to maintain its sales, the company needs to improve its approach to innovation by involving the consumer in every part of the process. Continuing to draw on the success of their campaigns with Beyoncé by infusing their strengths with modernity would be a strong strategic move. On the other hand, while customers are critical today, only time will tell if Tiffany’s is eroding its own brand equity or if it can overcome this initial resistance. For now, the only way for Tiffany to follow through on its mission to rewrite history is to listen to its changing audience in a traditionally codified world.
