IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Celebrities

  • Marc’s Makeover: Marc Jacobs’ decision to rebrand… is it the right one?

    Deciding whether or not to rebrand your company is an immense decision. Your brand is the face and personality of your company. It is what viewers connect with. Changing this identity will greatly affect your company, but if done right the market can soar.

    Fashion designer Marc Jacobs has decided it is time for his company, Marc Jacobs International to rebrand. In an interview with David Amsden from W Magazine Jacobs explains the troubles the Marc Jacobs brand had encountered. Describing the brand as having been “diluted” from his lack of creative supervision and merchandisers pushing his design team.

    In order to fix this Jacobs decided to leave his position at Louis Vuitton to grow his company, which includes boutiques, clothing lines such as Marc by Marc Jacobs and Little Marc Jacobs (a children’s clothing line), Bookmarc (a bookstore), and more.

    Some changes have already taken place such as his decision to move his offices from Manhattan to London and his decision to part with longtime campaign photographer Juergen Teller after he creatively disagreed on the Spring 2014 ad campaign which features Miley Cyrus. 

    marcmiley

    So what is Jacobs looking to do? He’s looking to redesign the logo and packaging, to build his shoe and handbag lines, and maybe even change the name, which he told W Magazine that he had always hated.

    Rebranding can be daunting between redefining research, audiences, creative campaigns, and even products, but for those experiencing continuous losses, it is often the best way to launch back into the market.

    In recent years, another clothing line, Burberry, underwent a widely recognized successful rebranding campaign. Over the years, the British line went from being known for its historically iconic outwear, to being associated with cheapest form of high fashion, and even gang wear.

    In 2006, the company hired Angela Ahrendts and in the next six years, she turned the ubiquitous brand back to luxurious. First, Ahrendts did what she called “buying back the company.” Reigning in the 23 licenses Burberry had around the world, control was brought back to the company with centralized executive and creative offices that could maintain product authenticity and exclusivity.

    Secondly, Ahrendts recognized we are in the age of digital consumption and a digital generation – tapping into the resources social media and technology offers. In stores, sale assistants are equipped with iPads, and mirrors transform into screens displaying catwalk images. Online, the company continues to grow its presence, attracting over 16 million fans on Facebook, and over 2 million followers on Twitter. Burberry also uses YouTube to broadcast campaigns, events, music, and even corporate news. 

    However, rebranding is not exclusive to high profile companies, the challenges above are things that can be experienced in all types of companies: personal, mid, or large. So how do you know if you should rebrand your own company? From Katie Morrell’s article “10 Signs You Should/Should not Rebrand” here are some warming signs that your company should rebrand.

    Macro problems

    Maria Ross, author of Branding Basics for Small Business: How to Create an Irresistible Brand on Any Budget (2010, Norlights Press) suggests that if a company notices that their target customers are choosing the competition over their own company and if a decrease in sales is also trending, rebranding should be considered.

    Look and function don’t match

    Another element that should be considered when having a decrease in customers is “From a cosmetic point of view, when you look old and your looks don’t reflect what you are or what you deliver, it may be time to rebrand,” said Susan Betts, senior strategy director for New York-based FutureBrand North America.

    Attracting the wrong customers

    Rebranding is beneficial when a company wants to change their target customers. It gives a company an opportunity to create a new brand identity that the new target audience has the chance to connect too.

    Management change

    When a company changes management, it is normal that policies and values change as well. When a companies values change, rebranding is a good idea.

    Philosophy/function change

    When a company changes it’s direction, rebranding can showcase to customers what they may or may not be aware of concerning this change. Betts also mentions rebranding should be considered when a company has a “New philosophy or a changed philosophy”.

    These signs are great examples to take heed from, but it is important to note rebranding should not be done unless it has been proven your brand identity is the root of your problems. Branding is the largest initial investment for a company, it sets the spring board for your identity, association, and customers. Rebranding is an even bigger investment – an attempt to reintroduce ideas to already established and preconceived perceptions is no easy task, it is one that must be thoroughly strategized. For Burberry, reigning in and refining their identity proved to be the best decision the company has made. For Jacobs, we will see what his creative vision produces.

    What companies do you think have faltered recently or over the years? Who needs to rebrand?

    – Caroline Robinson, Savannah Valade, Elizabeth Harrington

  • New Season, New Drama

    For 7.8 million people, winter wasn’t too cold and lonely.  Their break was filled with anticipation and whispers about Juan Pablo Galavis, the new bachelor on ABC’s hit show The Bachelor.  As the first Latino to be featured on the show, his good looks and Spanish accent had women across the country swooning.  Now, almost three weeks later, Juan Pablo is still causing a stir – but for very different reasons.

    In an interview this past week, Juan Pablo gave a very controversial answer to whether he thought The Bachelor should make a gay or bisexual version of the show.

    “I respect [gay people], but I don’t think it is a good example for kids to watch that,” he said.  “There’s this thing about gay people — it seems to be, I don’t know if I’m mistaken or not — I have a lot of friends like that, but they’re more pervert in a sense.”

    Bachelor Nation recoiled at Galavis’ less-than-sexy response.  Some Juan Pablo fans rushed to his defense, but members of the gay community were more outspoken.  One Facebook user accused Galavis of knowing exactly what he was saying, as “pervertido” is the Spanish word for pervert.

    Even Bachelor producers felt the need to do some public relations acrobatics.  Producers tried to shift any blame away from the show and entirely onto Galavis, saying “Juan Pablo’s comments were careless, thoughtless and insensitive, and in no way reflect the views of the network, the show’s producers or studio.”

    juan pablo

    Juan Pablo later apologized through Facebook. He insisted that throughout the interview, he had nothing but respect for gay people and their families.  He did not mean to use the word pervert, but misspoke because of his limited English vocabulary.  He claimed to have only meant that gay people are more affectionate and intense, which might not be viewed positively by some of the TV audience.

    Juan Pablo probably meant to use apologia, a rhetoric in communication that is used in defense for one’s actions or opinions.  However, to many members of the gay community, it was perceived as a non-apology apology – something quite the opposite.  A term that first appeared in the ’70s, a non-apology is when you apologize – but only if you have to.  Many celebrities or companies involved in a scandal will attempt to enact crisis communication by “apologizing” for offending anyone, rather than for their actions.   To the public eye, Juan Pablo’s apology had non-apologetic written all over it.  Pulling the “I-don’t-speak-English-so-good” card as one CNN reporter so delicately put it, is one such red flag.

    Was Juan Pablo sincere in his apology? Or was he just trying to cover up some ill-used “palabras”?

    – Christine Schulze

  • The Hunger Games are…Real?

    The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, opened on November 22, 2013 as a sequel to the Hunger Games. What started as a series of books by Suzanne Collins has been turned into a hit soon-to-be trilogy. Catching Fire made an estimated $158,074,286.00 on its opening night in the United States alone, according to IMDB. The blockbuster film partnered with many companies, including Subway and Feeding America. This trio has combined forces to also include Twitter in an effort to end hunger.

    As a result of Subway and Catching Fire being partners, Subway is currently using the tributes of the Games to encourage people to eat in the restaurant. This type of celebrity endorsement brings in people who might not normally eat there. “Oh, if Peeta eats Subway, I should too!” Granted, this behavior might come more from children but they, in turn, will ask their parents to take them to Subway. I’ve seen this time and time again with my younger siblings. This also works for the older crowd, however, because a partnership of this nature often includes promotional items or sales/deals that someone may anticipate being offered. Subway has transformed their marketing strategies and dining areas, with concepts like “Where Victors Eat” and “Win your own Victory Tour,” with the latter being a sweepstakes in conjunction with their collectible Catching Fire drink cups.r_kat1

    In the third and final facet of this trio of partners, Feeding America has jumped in and put their cause directly in the middle. Subway has placed cardboard cutouts of tributes Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick in the dining areas of Subways. A patron, after eating “What Victors Eat,” can take a photo with the cutouts and post it to the Subway Twitter, with the hashtag of #SUBtractHunger. Each time a hashtag is used, it is counted towards the 1,000,000 meals that Subway will buy for Feeding America. In the fine print, it says that Subway will donate up to $125,000, as each dollar makes about nine meals. However, this linkage will only exist until 11:59pm on December 15, 2013. The meals will be provided from Feeding America through local food banks in areas in need.

    This celebrity endorsement effectively ties in cause marketing in order to create an environment in which Subway patrons are encouraged to aid Feeding America. Though there is no mention of patrons being able to donate money directly to Feeding America via Subway and Catching Fire, the Feeding America website has a donation area, as well as a hyperlink to a Hunger Games site, where a large “Ignite the Fight Against Hunger” plea is proudly displayed under a Mockingjay and above a photo of the tributes stoically ready to win the real-world Hunger Games. The number of families that go hungry over the holidays is continuously growing. With Feeding America, Subway, and the Hunger Games movie series teaming up to feed families, alongside many other organizations attempting to end hunger, do you think the odds are in are their favor?

    -Hilary Hall

  • #YTMA… What’s that?

    This past Sunday, November 3rd, YouTube decided to take a leap and reinvent the fundamentals of music video awards as we know them; YouTube held their inaugural YouTube Music Awards (YTMA). The live-streamed event, sponsored by Kia, took place in New York City. Directed by Spike Jonze, YTMA was an interesting and unconventional mix of miscellaneous acts, unscripted hosts (Jason Schwartzman and Reggie Watts), and awkward moments. Although they received criticism of their “home made” feel they did one-up their MTV awards competitors in one aspect, along with live performances by popular artist such as Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Arcade Brothers they also incorporated “live music videos”.

    According to Ad Age, YouTube averages more than 1 billion viewers each month and is owned by Google, the most powerful of all internet companies. With this is mind we can only assume that the YTMA was a huge success. Wrong! The viewership was astonishing low, it was only viewed by 220,000 people at its peak; to put this into perspective the MTV VMA’s viewership was at 10.1 million this year.

    So where did they go wrong? Although both Kia and Youtube advertised on their websites’ homepages for some time prior to the event. YouTube neglected to realize the importance of advertising on their mobile app.  This was a huge miss to their prime public because mobile apps are 40% of where their user base are present.

    Also, unlike watching music video awards on TV, YouTube had a social media disadvantage.  Like many live TV events YMTA did have a hashtag, #YTMA, for viewers to tweet while watching the event. The hashtag reached a decent number of about 30,000 tweets, but there was potential to have had much more. Once again they forgot to keep in mind that many of their viewers watch from mobile devices, making it difficult to watch and tweet at the same time. This resulted with a large decrease of tweets about YTMA when the event went live, which possibly hindered other tweeters to start viewing.

    These two factors alone go against the Audience Theory by Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca which states “approaches will achieve the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience.”  YouTube’s target audience is the social media and mobile users, and because YouTube did not take into account these minor but impacting factors, it may have cost them viewers.  Nicholas Carr the author of The Shallows says, “most TV shows and movies are also trying to become more Web-like”. I think YouTube may be going in the wrong direction. They have excelled as an online video website, for their sake they should keep it that way and stop trying to be more TV-like.

    -Kelsey Raskob

  • Paul McCartney’s NEW Publicity Stunt

    The digital world of iTunes and social media has given the music industry both high and low notes. While the Internet offers accessibility, it also caters to specificity. Most predominantly, the Internet offers an array of platforms for artists to upload, share, and send their music.  However, while music junkies may be constantly searching for new digs, most people eventually acquire a particular taste for what they choose to send through their ear buds.  Internet music services such as Pandora, Spotify, and iHeartRadio allow users to handpick and listen to an endless variety of artists and genres. This narrowcasting of music leaves artists waging campaigns to try to reach listeners. As a result, clutter prevails.

    Like in advertising, clutter has become a big problem in music promotion. As Douglas Rushkoff pointed out in The Persuaders, “The more messages they create, the more they have to create to reach us.”

    The more opportunity social media platforms – YouTube, MySpace Music, and most recently Vine – offer artist to share their music, the more competitive and important promotion of music and musician become.

    So how does a music artist break through all the online music clutter without breaking budget? The answer is: great music, a little luck, and a publicity stunt.

    Not new to the music arena are surprise gigs on rooftops or buses in the middle of big cities, events known in the public relations world as a publicity stunts. This past October, music legend Sir Paul McCartney promoted his recently released album, NEW, by doing just such a thing – performing a surprise concert in the middle of Times Square.

    Paul McCartney at performs at the Times SquareTelling fans only hours before – via Twitter – he played a 15-minute long show featuring the single “New”, as well as music from the (not at the time released) album. McCartney was not only able to give NYC fans a concert, but fans from around the world could tune in through Times Square live webcast and watch the performance.

    pm tweet nyThe surprise gig resulted in social media buzz and major news coverage, all promoting the NEW album for free. The stunt was so successful; exactly a week later he performed another surprise concert in London.

    pm tweet loSir Paul McCartney proved how to conquer the masses. Not only did he succeed in making his fans happy, but also he succeeded in executing a publicity stunt that generated both word of mouth and media coverage that ended up promoting his music at no cost to him.

    –Caroline Robinson, Savannah Valade 

  • Training Fresh with Subway

    Athletes today are not only known for their moment of fame on the big screen during game day, but also, for their many appearances endorsing popular products, brands, and, restaurants. Subway is a restaurant chain not only known for their popular array of sandwiches, but, also for the many athletic spokespeople that work to promote their healthy food options. Surpassing McDonald’s in number of worldwide restaurants, Subway is most definitely a force to be reckoned with in the fast food industry.

    Being so high on the fast food chain, a restaurant of such magnitude wants only the best to represent their brand. This is why Subway has chosen to use well-known athletes as celebrity endorsements. They have been quick to snag star athletes from a plethora of sports and now appear to be greatly reaping the benefits of their decisions, but, why? How do these athletes help encourage everyday consumers to eat Subway? Easy!

    Subway prides themselves on being able to partner with big name athletes such as Nastia Liukin, Michael Phelps, Robert Griffin III and Apolo Ohno, but, they did not pick these celebrities at random. According to Tony Pace, SVP and global CMO of Subway “We choose fans of Subway who just happen to be famous.”

    One of Subway’s newest marketing campaigns utilizes their celebrity endorsements by asking them the simple question; what’s your favorite Subway sandwich? Each athletes answer can be found on the Subway website under the “Famous Fans” tab.

    sub

    The page includes a brief description of each of their fourteen supporters alongside the name of their favorite sandwich. Subway’s slogan is, “Subway, the official training restaurant of athletes everywhere.” This goes hand in hand with their promotion of healthy eating and low-calorie sandwich options. Yet still, many want to know why just the sight of their website or viewing of a thirty-second commercial clip makes us want to eat Subway.

    It has to do with the attribution theory, studied in many communication and psychology classes. Viewers of Subway commercials see famous celebrity athletes supporting Subway and attribute their success to Subway and its healthy sandwich options. One of Subway’s newest commercials features the famous Washington Redskin’s quarterback, Robert Griffin III, better known as RG3. Throughout the commercial the narrator makes Comments such as, “RG3 trains hard and smart with low-fat protein-rich turkey breast” and “RG3 always scores with his fav, Subway turkey breast with spinach and tomatoes.” This creates an automatic correlation in the mind of consumers between the success of Robert Griffin III and his decision to eat at Subway.

    RG3

    As we continue to see RG3 and other athletes on Subway commercials, and hear about all of their many accomplishments, we will most likely continue to choose Subway as a top fast food restaurant. I mean, who else wants to eat at the same restaurant as Jarvis Jones, Mike Trout, and Carl Edwards? We do! This healthy promotion is one that has everyone giving Subway two thumbs up and a stamp of approval.

    -Caitlin Ford, Kaitlin Bateson, Parker Farfour, Alex Corrigan

  • Paula Deen Deep Fries Her Empire

    Upon hearing “Paula Deen” your first thought probably used to be of her traditional Southern food, restaurants, cookbooks, and television shows. However, within the past few months that initial thought has probably changed. Over the summer, accusations of Paula Deen making racist slurs flooded the news headlines. Within days of the incident’s reveal, corporations began to discuss dropping their sponsorship with Deen. With numerous household brands supporting her corporation, her empire was at a serious risk and her PR team was swamped.

    After Paula Deen’s racial slurs made national headlines, her initial contact with the media was questionable – she failed to show up for an interview with Matt Lauer and sent out two separate videos apologizing for ditching the interview, claiming she “would never intentionally hurt anyone.” Several days later, during her first interview about the accusations, she turned the events around, focusing on how hard these allegations have been on her and her family making close to no attempt to apologize for her actions. Her initial response was to apologize not only to Matt Lauer and the Today Show crew for ditching them, but to anyone who she may have hurt.  However, she used transcendence, an aspect of apologia that puts the issue at hand in a different context, in the interview when she said “I go into my kitchens and hear what these young people are calling each other. It’s very distressing for me. I think for this problem to be worked on these young people are gonna have to take control and start showing respect for each other.”  She had gone even further to use differentiation, another aspect of apologia, by stating that “The day I used that word was a world ago — I had a gun put to my head.” She is definitely trying to make herself sound like the victim of a much more serious act. What do you think of Paula Deen’s tactics on handling her latest scandal? She initially apologized to everyone for the accusations against her, but days later tried to turn it around to make viewers feel sorry for her.

    Sponsors dropped Deen’s brand and months passed with no word from the Emmy Award-winning T.V. chef – until this past weekend. This past Sunday, the “Queen of Southern Cooking” made her first public appearance in Texas since her controversy over the summer. Deen came back with a bang, receiving a ten-minute standing ovation from fans as she walks on stage, almost as if her fans have completely forgotten about the event over the summer. Some people felt that she did not spend enough time out of the limelight, but others say they’re ready for Deen to make her return. Despite her rocky and scattered PR strategy, an online survey conducted by LA. Times revealed that 92% of people are ready to see Paula Deen back on television. No one knows for sure what lies ahead for Paula Deen and her brand. Do you think it’s too early for Paula to make her return?

    – Tilson Hackley