Fashion promotion (Year 1)

NI INFI TY

EYES

Infinity Eyes Surenjav Nomin-Erdene Srudent ID: 24397741

Infinity Eyes Infinity Eyes is the new launched brand planning to open in London stores in April 2013. The company will sell T-shirts and accessories. In the t-shirt industry, there aren’t many barriers to entry or difficulties in finding suppliers. However, the market is huge - the competition in the t-shirt industry has increased substantially.

Moreover, the consumer has high bargaining power. The recent development of technology and increased use of internet can help buyers to compare styles and prices of a wide range of t-shirts online.

As a result, the business has many competitors. Our new developed t-shirt company will take actions, interact with consumers and aim for a market share of 1% in one year. For the design, we will work with new artists and create unique drawn t-shirts, and the t-shirts will be fitted, oversized or even wrapped DIY t-shirt.

This report will briefly explain the company outline of brand equity and promotion campaign.

NITY I F N I

EYES

Outline 1.Target Market 2.1 Brand equity -Brand Awareness -Brand Loyalty -Brand Association 2.2 Brand Strategy -Brand position -Differential Brand Benefits -Brand Identity 3.The Promotional campaign 3.1 Communication Mix -Internet and Social Media -Advertising -Direct Marketing -Sales Promotion -Public Relations -Visual Merchandising -Event Conclution

Target Market The company is targeted at generation Y female customers (around 17- 28 years old) in the mid-market level, more specifically to those who likes to dress hipster or modern vintage and not interested in mainstream fashion.

The target customers are innovators and freethinkers. They are self-confident and not afraid to try something new which is exactly what hipsters do.

Designing Hipster t-shirts is quite simple. They usually like sarcastic quotes and V neck t-shirts are one of the main items for hipsters. This visual pen portrait will explain the segment of the customers. Hipsters usually dislike mainstream fashion, but the Infinity Eyes will be in mainstream. However, we will design our stores with a hipster environment.

Brand equity/Brand Value Brand equity is in terms of the marketing effects particularly attributable to the brand. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2013), “Brand equity is the commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, rather than from the product or service itself ”. Infinity Eye’s brand equity will work on the high quality perception, price premiums and high consumer satisfaction level.

Brand equity consists of five different asset dimensions which include brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand quality, brand associations and other proprietary brand assets (David, A 2009 ). Therefore, Infinity Eyes (IE) will track our brand equity in three assets: brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand association. This may add value to our t-shirts, services and satisfaction of customers.

INFINITY

EYES

2.1.1 Brand Awareness Brand awareness is the ability of target consumers to recognise or recall a brand’s existence. Using brand awareness can identify benchmarks such as data from prior periods, different markets or competitors (Pegg, A 2013).

In other words, how many people know that brand. Infinity Eyes brand is a new brand needs to achieve recognition. Our firm is planning to do opening day of store and to introduce the target customers which we need to advertise our opening campaign. Our target customers are internet-savvy and fashion conscious, mostly following blogs or bloggers. Therefore we will contact with some hipster and fashion bloggers (unhappyhipsters.com ,ahipster.com , fashionbeans.com , lookbook.nu , amlul.com , thestylerookie.com ,facehunter.blogspot.com etc.) to ask to promote our opening day and we will give some t-shirt to advertise. Moreover, We will advertise some hipster magazine such as I-D, Lula. Futhermore, there are social networks such as Tumblr, Facebook, Instagramm, Pinterest, one of the way to promote campaign. After the promotional campaigns, it should be recognized with my target customers. However, when starting a new business, it is hard to measure brand awareness.

It cannot measure brand equity by brand awareness alone. One of the ways to know brand awareness in our new firm is how many people read the blog and how many people comment on it.

2.1.2 Brand Loyalty Brand loyalty is the tendency of some consumers to keep buying the same brand rather than other competitors’.

In other words, brand loyalty is the qualitative customer loyalty which underpins the brand’s value. However, it does not mean that consumers are loyal to only one brand. Infinity Eye is planning on measuring brand loyalty using a store card or length of time associated with the brand. When the company is established, we will do a survey to find out customer satisfaction. We will try our best to provide the most fashionable t-shirts to our customers and regularly renew collections, which may help to build brand loyalty.

2.1.3 Brand Association Brand association is anything that is directly or indirectly linked in the consumer’s memory to a brand ( Willey, J 2010). Association differentiates the brand from others. Infinity Eyes is associated with Galaxy print and the logo of infinity symbol shaped around the eyes. Our belief is that these associations are unique compared to the competitors. For example, our competitors Urban Outfitters and American Apparel do not use logos with symbols.

However, they are large American firms and the name is deeply seated in a consumer’s mind.

In conclusion, using three assets model implicates our brand equity and provides value to the customers, and resulting customer value will provide value to our firm.

Brand strategy Brand strategy involves the positioning, differentiation and brand identity.

2.2.1 Brand position Competitive brand positioning is difficult to achieve. Positioning needs to keep competitors out. In other words, the firm needs to be differentiated so that customer is aware of the brand. Positioning is about taking advantage of new gaps in the market. The Infinity Eyes will stand with its the affordable price and the hippest styles. Our main competitors are American Apparel and Urban Outfitters and both of their target markets are the hipsters. However, American Apparel sells mostly plain T-shirt at cheap prices, while Urban Outfitters sell graphic tees at middle-high prices. As a result, we found a gap between American Apparel and Urban Outfits and will design similar graphic t-shirts as Urban Outfitters, but at lower prices.

+ PRICE around £30 around £28 £15-£30 NI INFI TY

around£20

- FASHION less than £20

- PRICE

EYES

+ FASHION

2.2.2 Differential Brand benefit In recent years, there has been a wide range of clothing companies. “Carefully choosing the most powerful benefits will result in the brand preference and loyalty as the customer will not pursue substitutes if the brand is not available” (Pegg, A 2013). The most powerful benefits include a brand being easy to understand, trustworthy, special and compelling. Our company is working on these factors. The benefit is affordable pricing with fresh hipster styles. Moreover, in our unique decorated store, customer can spend free time with their friends. We design the stores as a hipster environment and live indie rock music will play monthly in the store. Furthermore, the biggest differential brand benefit is the Fitted T-shirt. The customer will have their own fitted size t-shirt to order. Some customers sometimes can’t get a perfectly fitting t-shirt, for example for size 6 and size 8, the person wide shoulders or large bust do not fit in size 6, but size 8 might be too large around the waist. We solve this problem by measuring the customer and the t-shirt will be tailor made and ready the next day.

2.2.3 Brand Identity Brand identity is controlled within an organization and should relate to how the company wishes consumer to perceive and engage with the brand. It is vital that customers are more engaged with a brand’s identity. Moreover, the brand must have an engaging identity using a logo, unique products or services, packaging, retail environment, window displays, promotion and website. Infinity Eyes does all of these, as shown in the digital boards. There are three crucial elements to develop and manage a company effectively which are brand essence, values and personalities.

-Brand Essence Brand essence is the heart of the brand and should define the brand concisely. The Infinity Eyes brand essence is “The coolest hipsters unique clothing company”.

-Brand Value Brand value is an expansion of the theme of brand essence and it informs all aspects of how the company runs its business. Our company value is to offers unique fashionable t-shirts at a low cost and products will frequently be updated.

-Brand Personality Consumers’ feelings about themselves often match with their brand choices and the particular associations embedded for them in brand personalities. One way to build a relationship between a brand and a consumer is to create an appealing brand personality. In other words, to associate human characteristics with a brand to make it more attractive to consumers. Our brand personalities are hipster, artistic sassy, anarchic, edgy, independent, super confident, creative and unconventional. We believe that these will connect with our target customers.

20% student discount monthly alive music in dtore

sassy

anarchic creative

competitions to win the price

the coolest

artistic affordable price

product rotation will be frequently changed

Hipster Unique Fun Cool

create unique styles for the innovative customer

super body confident edgy

tech-savvy

Makes affordable price ÂŁ20-ÂŁ40

inpedendent

offer exclusive fitted t-shirt

unconventional

free thinking

mix hipster style with vintage style

The Promotional campaign As a new brand in the high-fashion industry, promotional plan is essential. Infinity Eyes(IE) will provide quality, fashionable products and be known as new market offerings that meets the need and demand of the target market and setting a target to reach market shares of 1% in the short-term achievement of our company’s goals. To achieve these goals, we will use an IMC (Integrated Marketing Communication) plan. According to Easey, M (2009) “IMC is a concept of Marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact”. Moreover, the main objective of IMC is to use direct communication in order to bring about behavioral changes and that marketing communication means should be used together in order to establish a relation between target consumer and the brand (Shimp,T 2000). Communication involves engaging with the target market “sender....message.... receiver” (Pegg, A 2013). For this marketing strategy, the mission of the IE in a year is to make the new brand of Infinity Eyes known in the market, rise in consumer awareness and maximize sales. Our company will operate this communication mix with a limited budget. IE brand will employ Advertising, Public Relations, Visual Merchandising, Direct Marketing, events Internet and Social Media communication mix tools.

Communication mix Internet and Social Media With regards to Digital and Social, generation Y are tech-savvy with a tendency to support heritage brands and engage with companies via social media.

IE plans to create our own online website, blog and social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Youtube. Therefore, internet and social media will be the most essential promotional campaign to our company. IE’s first step of communicating with consumers is the Official website with the main objective of utilizing e-marketing strategy to keep in touch with different internet users to attract more clients and consumers. Moreover, the website is not only for selling the t-shirts, it also includes the blog, competitions and more interesting activities that consumers may more connect with it. The price of opening website will approximately around $100,000 (£1=$1.56) £64,102 ( Mackechnie, A undated).

Social media supports what is published on the company blog and website and encourage the consumer to visit the official website. Moreover, it is more beneficial in many ways that social media helps companies build relationships with the consumer, helps the company build their brand, awareness of negative publicity and the latest promotions. The first step of IE social media strategy is how to inform target consumers about IE. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr would to start open the page with the name “Infinite Eyes” which underlines our brand.

In order to increase popularity, research on target customers will be done by visiting various fashion groups. This can encourage and motivate people from paying attention to the IE activities and produces. The second step is recall or maintaining the consumers.

The strategy is up to date with the customer and puts the latest products that consumer can be aware of it.

Moreover, there will be street style pictures that teach consumers how to style our t-shirts. Social media is free to open pages and has minimal costs to create adverts.

In conclusion, Internet and social media are the best ways to promote to generation Y and social media is one of the cheapest ways. We will measure our consumers, how many people will follow the social media pages. We aim to have 200,000 followers in Facebook in the first year.

Advertisement Advertisement is one of the promotional mix tools that it is communicated, the medium or channel used to display the advert and the timing and exposure of the advert or campaign (Posner, H 2011). There are five steps in the advertising planning process. The first step is to set objectives for the advertising campaign.

The objectives need to be clear and focus on the target consumer. The message can be about product launch, events or even sales. The second step is determine suitable media platforms such as print media, TV or radio. The third is to decide who will devise the campaign and then set a budget and time frame. The final step is to confirm the content.

As for Advertising, this will be the most expensive area that we will be focusing on. IE plans to collaborate with magazines. Magazines are one of the traditional mass media channels providing effective promotional tools for the target consumer. The bible of the Hipster magazines (Vice and Nylon) is published in the USA. However, in the UK the hipster or the fashion innovators read I-D and Lula magazines as both of them cover fashion and indie culture.

(Jessica, 2010). Magazine advertising is quite expensive, so we will decide to advertise once in I-D and the message will be about the opening store day event in April 2014 and introducing the brand. The average price of a full-page color advertise cost around $150,000 (ÂŁ96,156) in 2011 in the best fashion magazine (Alley, B undated). Therefore, this cost may rise, but i-D magazine is not a famous magazine that we will not pay more than ÂŁ50,000 and the i-D magazine has a circulation of 100,000. If we use CPT (a cost per thousand) calculation, the CPT would be ÂŁ500

Direct Marketing Direct Marketing is one of the popular communication tools to use in new developing brands. It is about direct communications attempting to create personal relationship and covers direct mail via post or email, Mail order catalogues, text message alert and magazine insert. In our company, direct marketing communication will takes only 5% of the communication mix and we are willing to send 100 emails per day.

However, finding the consumer contact is all linked with official website that we will only have contact for the number of consumers order our t-shirts or registered in websites. This tool may begin with inefficient results.

Sales Promotion The main aim of sales promotion is to make a product or service seem more attractive in a limited time.

IE will use two tools. First, voucher code. EI will use offers in HotUKDeals or Secret sale around twice per year.

Second, generation Y consumers are self confident, ambitious and they enjoy challenges to test themselves. Therefore, we will launch the competitions for consumers to try out how stylish they are and the win the price. The competition is all about styling, how consumer make stylish outfits wearing our t-shirts.

The consequence of the competition is consumer loyalty and the pictures submitted for the competition will support the brand awareness.

Public Relations PR is arguably the most important communication tool available to fashion marketers and it is good to work with a tight budget. Cutlip (2000) defines Public Relation is a marketing activity that generates publicity with a focus on developing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. IE is using this tool to encourage bloggers to discuss our brand. The Blogs will be related with fashion and indie, vintage and hipster culture.

We will contact with 20 bloggers in the UK and send items to them. As a consequence, it will be an effective tool for awareness of IE and a cheap way to advertise the opening day of shopping. Measuring PR effectiveness is vital that Clip Report and Column Inches methods can account the number of press articles published and the amount of column inches printed. However, IE will not use the press, therefore we will measure the number of number of blogs published about IE and amount of people visiting these blogs. For example, there are 600,000 visitors per month in Style Bubble and 150,000 unique visitors per month in My fashion life blog. Furthermore, we will contact with over twenty blogs and each blogs average will be at least 30,000 visitors a month with a mean total of 60,000 visitors in a month aware of IE.

Visual Merchandising VM is vital for promoting the brand and exciting the customer with visual drama. It includes mostly window displays and in-store displays. Moreover, good displays is needed to show the brand’s personality and frequently designed to fit in with important annual events. IE’s window display and store design will show hipster and vintage culture which means the store will use vintage items to use decorate it, wooden material and some hipster colors such as jasper yellow, marmalade, poolside blue and tangerine dream. Moreover, IE plans to put some unknown indie rock music to support the new bands..

Events Infinity Eyes first event will be its opening store event in April 2014. All of these communication tools help to collect the visitors.

In the event, we will offer 5% discounts, and stylish sales assistants will help consumers to choose products. Furthermore, our brand supports new indie rock bands who can come to the store to play live music. Every visitor will receive a goodie bag containing a look book and vouchers. In the event, we also call the press and reporters

In conclusion Infinity Eyes will promote the product and brand awareness in seven ways including advertising, internet and social media, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations, events and visual merchandising. The IMC technique will be beneficial to Infinity Eyes as it helps in identifying the most useful and appropriate ways to communicate with customers and establish good consumer relations. We will spend approximately ÂŁ100,000 in communication mix tools and we aim to have 30,000 customers within the first year.

10% 20% 40%

5% 15% 5%5%

SPEND IN 2008

SHOPPERS IN 2008

— CLOTHING, — THE AVERAGE UK FOOTWEAR AND SHOPPER IE will launch in the high street market with a T-ShirtONLINE range the in UK fashion industry. This ACCESSORIES SPENT £1,502 INit 2008 graphic shows the top 10 market shares of the fashion brand in 2009. As result, is not possible WAS THE FASTEST for IE to initially have more than 1% market share in the new high street market.

GROWING SECTOR IN 2008 TOP 10 PLAYERS JULY 2009 Source: HITWISE.

% of market share 1 Next 2 ASOS

2009 6.31% 5.13%

2008 8.96% 4.74%

Change -265 bps +39 bps

3 4 5

TopShop.com River Island New Look

3.44% 3.17% 2.99%

2.75% 2.61% 1.83%

+69 bps +56 bps +116 bps

6

Fat Face

1.61%

1.45%

+16 bps

7 8 9

Dorothy Perkins M and M Direct Boden

1.44% 1.39% 1.30%

1.41% 1.34% 1.31%

+3 bps +5 bps -1 bps

Laura Ashley

1.19%

1.22%

-3 bps

10

NNUAL REPORT AND ACCOUNTS 2009

dd 12

Stock Exchange Code: ASC

16750

24/08/09

Proof 7

24/08/2009 14:24

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