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Predicting A Growth Strategy For Weylandts (23/04/19)

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Weylandts is a family-owned and much loved South African furniture and homeware brand. Since (second generation) stakeholder Chris Weylandt joined the organisation in the 1990s it has grown tremendously. There's room for further expansion and the brand's consumer resonance suggests extension strategies would be best suited to this growth. (Images: www.weylandts.co.za; graphic: Martin Jacobs) When looking to grow as a brand, an organisation has the choice of implementing four possible strategies – launching new brands, brand extensions, multi-brand and endorsement strategies. Each comes with risks and benefits that the organisation needs to consider before deciding which is most appropriate. Often these strategies overlap or work best when combined. A market expansion grid therefore provides a helpful tool for identifying which strategies focus on developing new brands (independent of the influence of a parent brand), and which rely on consumer brand recognition and reputation....

Fashion's Sovereign Of Sustainability (16/04/19)

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Stella McCartney (left), founder of her eponymous fashion house, recently said, "The starting point is not design, the starting point is sustainability." This belief extends from garments to store design, her newest London store (centre) being a monument to sustainability and including  biodegradable mannequins and walls decorated with recycled paper pulp .  (Images: www.vogue.com, www.wired.co.uk, www.google.com; graphic: Martin Jacobs) “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it,” stated business magnate Warren Buffett. In our social media era, his estimation of the duration it takes to ruin a reputation is entirely apt, for the viral power that social platforms hold means that consumer opinions comprising a reputation can be speedily altered. Conversely, the building of a corporate reputation is a lengthy and on-going process, and one which requires constant internal re-evaluation to ensure brand relevance and consumer buy-in. A negatively perceive...

Everything Is Awesome! A Toy Brand's Reinvention Through Integrated Marketing (09/04/19)

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Encouraging creativity and fun are the primary focus of Lego's integrated marketing strategy. Applying that within the organisation, its ventures into (clockwise, from top left) children's movies, product eliciting nostalgia in adults, a social community app for children, and collaborations with other brands reveal a brand having fun, and unafraid to try new marketing platforms. (Images: www.lego.com, Google; graphic: Martin Jacobs) In the last decades of the twentieth century, Lego was regarded as a stagnant brand, one whose product was more highly valued than the brand itself. Yet in 2017 it was voted the world’s most powerful brand. What marketing revisions resulted in this seismic shift? Lego’s decision to abandon outdated marketing strategies and implement integrated marketing communications (IMC) was not only overdue, but also critical, to the organisation’s success in establishing brand resonance with an audience young and old, and to remaining relevant in our social me...

The Hotel Group Conquering External and Internal Brand Excellence (02/04/19)

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'No Request Too Large, No Detail Too Small', both  the organisation's  internal mantra and tagline, encourages employee engagement and an empowering attitude when interacting with hotel guests across the seventeen properties, including The Oyster Box (top) and Ashford Castle (bottom). (Images: www.redcarnationhotels.com; graphic: Martin Jacobs) In 2016, Red Carnation Hotels, which in South Africa  includes The Twelve Apostles, Bushmans Kloof, and The Oyster Box,  was listed third on  The Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to Work For  list and in 2018 was voted second in the  Top 20 Hotel Brands in the World  in  Travel + Leisure  ‘World’s Best’ Awards. These recent accolades – the first reflective of employee experience, the second indicative of a positive consumer one – speak of a unified internal and external brand, and one in which employee engagement through internal marketing is key to successfully executing one of the organisati...

A Nose For It: A Particularly Perfumed, Perfectly Positioned Cosmetics Brand (26/03/19)

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Lush's brand differentiation and positioning take advantage of a gap in the market for a cosmetics brand heavy on ethical awareness and environmental friendliness. Their six primary values are apparent in all their touchpoints and also reflect in the brand's fun, witty verbal and visual languages. (Images: www.lush.com, www.google.co.za; Graphic: Martin Jacobs) In 1995, in a coastal town in southern England, a new brand, Lush, set out to differentiate itself from competitors by attracting consumers in a most innovative manner, and one previously unexplored – through smell. No traditional media, be it print, television or radio, was employed in seducing consumers to experience this brand. Rather, on a sensory level, an enticing scent (heavy on minerals and earthiness)  emanated from its stores  and could be detected metres away, and  was used to differentiate the brand from its competitors. Twenty-five years later, apart from the tremendous growth of the organisa...